TO THE EDITOR:
Click and Clack, the hosts of NPR’s Car Talk, burst into almost uncontrollable laughter when a caller reveals they hold a liberal arts degree. Chuckles are followed by, “Good luck with that!”
A recent DTH article reaffirmed, less humorously, the endemic crisis of the liberal arts by pointing out majors’ comparatively high unemployment rates.
Arguments about the contemporary value of a liberal arts degree abound, but polemicists should first consider the history behind the depreciated prestige of the degree once considered the cornerstone of our democracy.
Since the 1970s, vocationalism or career-oriented education marginalized the liberal arts at many public institutions. A higher education was no longer a question of a liberal education, but specialized training previously learned on the job.
At large universities, the liberal arts attract fewer and fewer students who flock to new practical majors.
However, the Collegiate Learning Assessment, a standardized test that requires students to solve fictional business problems as well as write memos, reports that liberal arts majors continue to outperform communications and business majors.
If we accept that the market dictates the value of everything, we should probably ask why upper-class families still obsess about sending their children to a few selective liberal arts college with 5 percent acceptance rates.
Michael Joseph Mulvey
Visiting lecturer
History
