Liberal Arts Education in the US is a Scam

 

Liberal Arts is a way of education that stands in contrast to education programs that are vocational, professional or technical. Every year the US graduates multitudes from universities built on these principles, including myself not so long ago. Because I am pursuing a highly technical field, I am living in the fallout of having attended one of these universities. This has forced me to put my prior education under a microscope and examine it’s worth. I must stress the point that I am not an advocate of the typical alternatives to the liberal arts philosophy; I just want people to see it for what it is and consider that maybe it is time for an educational reform.

For a working definition of the Liberal Arts Philosophy, I will use what I found on ThoughtCo. “Liberal arts is a field of study based on rational thinking, and it includes the areas of humanities, social and physical sciences, and mathematics. A liberal arts education emphasizes the development of critical thinking and analytical skills, the ability to solve complex problems, and an understanding of ethics and morality, as well as a desire to continue to learn.” I would like to add additionally that there is an emphasis on building people skills as opposed to building up a singular technical skill. In principle, this is an amazing philosophy. People should be knowledgable about things outside of their work sphere and carry a sense of curiosity with them throughout their life. They should take time to read classic literature, which has proved it’s value by withstanding the test of time. People should also ponder life’s deeper questions. As Socrates said, “an unexamined life is not worth living.” But what really happens in practice? Do liberal arts institutions effectively instill the values they signal?

I will use my alma mater Christopher Newport University as an example. At this link one can find the current course catalogs, with a section called Liberal Learning Curriculum. The first component I find very problematic is second language literacy. While everyone should be strive to be multilingual, this is a complete failure in practice. Students study from a textbook the basics of second language with no immersion or motivation to use it. It is box checking at it’s finest. As soon as the course is completed, all is forgotten except the barebones of the language. Instead of preparing students to speak a second language, it prepares them to make ethnocentric comments at dinner parties about how the second language compares to the english they use everyday. Furthermore, there are bodies of research on effective language acquisition as an adult and the methods respect very little of it.

Another troublesome component is mathematical literacy. Courses that satisfy this requirement are basic statistics classes, a repeat of trigonometry from high school and the beginning of calculus. The problem I have is not what they require, but how little they require. Mathematics is an incredibly difficult and must be progressed slower than other subjects. Yet it also has incredible payoffs, such as the development of analytical thinking. This was one of the main goals of the liberal arts philosophy. Because university degrees can only require 120 credits, they have to cut short the development of analytical thinking to make room for courses that offer very little.

I suppose that the Economic Modeling and Analysis component is suppose to prepare the students to make efficacious financial decisions when they have their own income. This is an incredibly important skill, as people exchange money for goods and services every day of their life. So it would be prudent to develop this faculty. However, the economy is a complex system so it is not amenable to traditional analysis. One will find that theories are incredibly sterile if they do a brief review of the recent Nobel Prizes in Economics. Many influential economists are advocating that the prize is done away with entirely. Yet institutions continue to teach economics in this fashion. Yes, graduates will leave with a box checked that says they have been exposed to some economy specific vocabulary. But they will fail to have any actionable knowledge. I conjecture that if someone reads two economic classics, Rich Dad Poor Dad and Wealth of Nations, they will be better prepared to advise others financially than if they have completed a financial degree from one of these institutions.

I find the Global and Multicultural Perspectives component of the liberal arts curriculum quite humorous. I imagine the purpose of this component is to develop a well rounded world view and counteract the ethnocentrism that arises from growing up in a bubble. However, it is supposedly accomplished by taking a sociology, anthropology, philosophy or religion class and studying from a book. I don’t understand why this could be better than spending time dialoguing with people of different origins and developing a worldview built on experience. To fulfill this requirement, I took a course called Religions of the West. It was from a professor who studied at Harvard. My peers said he was over published and overqualified to be teaching at our no name university. In the course, we took a deep dive into the ideological structure of Buddhism. A few years later I moved to a country where around 100,000,000 people practice Buddhism. After getting to know many people in this country, I found out they didn’t believe any of the things that I thought were the core tenets of Buddhism. It turns out that in some fields, much academic literature is based on other academic literature. This literature is not based on anyones experience. So you end up with very technical esoteric papers that have nothing to do with anything, but look really impressive.

I could further critique each individual component of the liberal arts curriculum, but I want to avoid making this post to long. It should be clear that while the Liberal Arts Philosophy is something to be esteemed, in practice it does not effectively instill the skills and values it espouses. Painting broader brush strokes, I want to point out the general pattern of what happens in these classes. Because these classes are taken by all the majors, they tend to be a bit larger in size. This incentivizes the scantron test format for quicker grading. Students are generally not interested in them because it is not their chosen field of study. But the system also rewards high grades, regardless of learning or character development. So in order to get the highest grade in a class they care little about, students end up memorizing sterile facts from the powerpoints and regurgitate them on the scantron. This is the most effective way to deal with this situation and check the necessary boxes. It is heavily rewarded upon graduation, where the student gets many colorful tassels to take pride in.

So what, you may retort? The system isn’t 100% effective and some time is wasted, but life isn’t efficient and it is better than the alternatives. Plus, the students get to have a nice experience in college. It is an important time in life for personal development before “entering the real world.” But now consider that 60 credits, or half of the degree, is devoted to the liberal arts agenda. For the 2020-2021 year, average cost before aid (“aid” being primarily being debt to be paid back later, not scholarships because the university is public) was 31,796$. This means that approximately 64,000$ is devoted to coursework which at best offers very little return. But we continue to pay for this because we need the piece of paper.

What can someone do with 64,000$ in 2020? For starters, 20,000$ is enough money to live like royalty in many countries across the globe. This opens the door to immersion, which can accelerate someone to fluency in just 1-2 years. This also opens the door cross cultural exchange, allowing someone to have a well rounded worldview and empathy for other cultures. With an abundance of free time because one is not busy memorizing powerpoints, one can read classic literature. They can also learn the skill with the highest return in the modern economy, programming, while simultaneously improving logic and problem solving skills. For free, or very little money. They could also get an entry level job and learn collaboration and people skills, instead of studying communication theory. One could even just volunteer for a few years, pondering the deep questions of life. They can do this because their mind isn’t occupied with the thoughts of how they will acquire the most colored tassels on graduation day. The list of valuable alternative ways to spend this time and money goes on and on.

The current state of the world still offers many opportunities to those who are able to obtain a college degree. So if someone is in the middle of a liberal arts education, it would probably be prudent to finish it. However, it would also be wise to recognize it for what it is. It is a scam that over promises and under delivers. The sooner we can collectively recognize this and bring it to light, the sooner these institutions can be reformed.