WHEN IT comes to courses of study, I am certainly as "liberal artsy" in my background as they come, having spread myself happily across history, government and classics courses as an undergraduate. And generally speaking, it is no secret that a liberal arts major often can be viewed as less useful than more professional courses of study.
Often, I would reflect that there really was not much separating my English major friends from my studies as a history major. At the end of the day, we were both students of the liberal arts. If the English major was not a shortcut to a cushy job, neither was a history major going to provide me a comfortable sinecure. Utilitarian we were not. There is more than just a ring of truth to the statement that a liberal arts undergraduate degree is less likely to land you a job out of undergraduate school than one in engineering or architecture or business.
Still, I am a bit sensitive to allegations that a liberal arts education is as worthless as some aver. Even in law school, with a hotbed of individuals from liberal arts backgrounds, I cannot say how many times I have heard it said that a liberal arts degree was useless, and I should have studied engineering or business. Unfortunately, the critics of a liberal arts education fundamentally underestimate its intrinsic worth.
The basic benefit of liberal arts programs is that one is exposed to the breadth and depth of human thought in its fullest sense, while developing one's skills in logic, rhetoric and persuasion. An English major has the opportunity, through poetry and prose, to savor the panorama of Anglo-Saxon civilization from the early seeds of the Arthurian legends to its transplants in the contemporary United States and elsewhere. And, as a history major, I have come to appreciate that understanding the past can help address the problems of the present and serve as a guide to the future. Indeed, a liberal arts course of study allows one to take a particular branch of human thought and dissect it to its core in a way that many courses of professional study simply would not allow. Certainly, liberal arts students are opting for a higher degree of intellectual flexibility and foregoing the financial security offered in more narrow courses of professional study.
It is a very valid point to raise that individuals with engineering, business or architectural backgrounds often have equal access to same opportunities as liberal arts students - after all, if an individual with an engineering background wants to go to law school, what could stop him? It would seem like some traditionally liberal arts postgraduate opportunities are just as available to those without liberal arts backgrounds as they are to those with such a background.
Still, I am convinced that those who are trained primarily to think quantitatively rather than qualitatively are at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to pursuing many postgraduate opportunities which are classically the domain of liberal arts majors.
Law, for example, is quintessentially about interpreting nuanced layers of meaning, illuminating the written word and understanding the context of past decisions. The ability to assimilate vast amounts of material in a short period, distill complex transactions into coherent documents and write cogent and incisive analytical papers is enormously helpful. To enter such a field without some experience in discerning the themes of a broad, disconnected set of cases or without having the ability to work through incomprehensible writing styles to discover hidden meanings can be very, even insurmountably, difficult.
A liberal arts education equips one with these skills - perhaps more so than a more professionally geared course of study would. As a current law student, I can say conclusively that my own liberal arts background has proved to be lifesaving. From a basic familiarity with the process of constructing large papers, to the ability to speed through an unreasonable amount of reading, my methods of managing in law school are more or less a logical outgrowth of the skills I learned from my liberal arts majors. And, indeed, I would hazard that this is the prevailing consensus in the legal field; Undergraduate majors which expose you to active reading, critical thinking and analytical writing are often a simple necessity in navigating professional fields such as law school, even if they are less helpful in securing the post-graduation job.
Is this trade-off, flexibility for security, worth it? I think it depends on the person. Some want to use college as their time for intellectual exploration. Others want to gain practical knowledge which is readily translatable into lucrative jobs. In a very real sense, it is a balance between education and vocation. It is a very real dilemma, made more difficult in the current economic environment.
Still, I think prudence is necessary: The utility of a course of study cannot be measured fully just by considering whether it will more reliably secure one employment after graduation.
Ultimately, this seems to be the case of apples versus oranges: Neither way is wrong, and both are useful in their own way. Claims of uselessness by one side or another are themselves of little value. It appears to come down to just what you would prefer.
Sanjiv Tata's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at s.tata@cavalierdaily.com.
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