Is liberal arts education dead? Today’s Chronicle of Higher Education has an article (subscription required) covering a plenary speech by Jonathan Kozol at the annual conference of the Society for College and University Planning.
Jonathan Kozol
In the article, Scott Carlson writes that Kozol feels his “audacity, tenacity, and interest in justice came from his college education, which was grounded in the liberal arts.” But Kozol adds that many of the college presidents he talks to are mourning the decline of liberal arts education.
They have had to cut out programs like art and literature for curricula perceived as more useful to the job market, and they have increasingly adopted a “get them in and get them out” mentality. “We want you down on bended knee to give us the workers we require,” Mr. Kozol said, in the voice of those business pressures. “We want technicians of efficiency.”
“My friends,” he said, “to me this spells the death of culture.”
So far Independent Colleges of Washington member institutions have been able to resist that pressure, and remain committed to high-quality, academically rigorous learning and to an education that emphasizes critical thinking, lifelong learning, ethics, leadership, and community service. Yet in Washington much of the policy discussion around higher education is focused on training and the needs of the workforce. Those things are important, and member colleges meet those demands, too. But ICW agrees with Kozol, who says that “education for utility and employability alone will not contribute to the soul of a real democracy.”
