Why Liberal Arts?

• “Don’t knock the economic value of majoring in the liberal arts, (2023)”

Dick Starts, professor of Economics at UCSB writes, “One hopes that students go to college for more than just the financial value of the degree—not just for their own sake but also because society needs a citizenry equipped to think broadly. But that hope aside, liberal arts degrees do pay.”

• Inside HigherEd, “A Practical Education,” (2017)

Author and business professor Randall Stross answers questions about the research and conclusions in his book, A Practical Education: Why Liberal Arts Majors Make Great Employees (Stanford University Press)

• Jonah Lehrer, “Steve Jobs: ‘Technology is Not Enough’,” (2011)

“When introducing the iPad 2 in March, Jobs summarized his strategy this way: ‘It is in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing’ . . . ‘One of the greatest achievements at Pixar was that we brought these two cultures together and got them working side by side,’ Jobs said in 2003.”

• Tom Ehrlich, “The Business of Business Education Is More than Business,” (2009)

“With the need for critical analysis and good judgment in business more important than ever, the author argues that we must strengthen our commitment to ensure that undergraduate students who major in business and other professional fields also gain the benefits of a strong liberal-arts education.”

• Forbes, “Why Mark Cuban believes Liberal Arts is the Future of Jobs,” (2017)

CEO Mark Cuban thinks that there will be greater demand for liberal arts majors in 10 years. He thinks of liberal arts as the humanities. “I personally think there’s going to be a greater demand in 10 years for liberal arts majors than there were for programming majors and maybe even engineering . . . When the data is all being spit out for you, options are being spit out for you, you need a different perspective in order to have a different view of the data.”

• Washington Post, “Liberal arts education: Waste of money or practical investment? Study’s conclusions might surprise you,” (2020)

“The Georgetown study finds that the return on a liberal arts education is not typically immediate — at 10 years, the median return is $62,000 — but over the decades of a career, it is solid. Only doctoral universities with the two highest levels of research activity, well-known institutions such as Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, fared better in the school’s estimated return on investment. The median 40-year return of $918,000 at liberal arts colleges is more than 25 percent higher than the median for all colleges, researchers found.”
“The Georgetown study follows a more sweeping analysis by the center using federal data to calculate net present value to estimate return on investment at more than 4,500 colleges and universities across the country. The study takes into account factors including costs, financial aid and future earnings.”

• Forbes, “A Liberal Arts Degree Is More Important Than Ever,” (2016)

This article stresses the importance of liberal arts degree as an unfettered pursuit of truth and knowledge, and as even one way to ease political tensions.