The Art of Learning… A Fresh Look at Liberal Arts Education

Gone are the days when each one of us must be super specialized. While our world is obsessed with specialization and technical skills, many jobs do not require a specific college degree and allow for a broad range of degrees or simply require any college degree.

Here shines a twist towards an old-fashioned approach to learning. It is what Ancient Greeks called “The Liberal Arts Education”.

While Liberal Arts Education has long been established in the US higher education system, it has only recently resurfaced in continental Europe, where it originated once upon a time. Meanwhile, in Asia, there is a network of respectable liberal arts universities, the Alliance of Liberal Arts Universities (AALAU) – a group that was established in November 2017.

In this blog post, we will travel back in time somehow to explore why Liberal Arts Education never gets old, and how this educational approach can spark innovation and shape tomorrow's leaders.

Liberal Arts Education… Then and Now

Liberal arts education is not just about acquiring knowledge; it is about becoming a well-rounded and engaged citizen of the world. It is a broad-based educational approach and exposes students to science, mathematics, social sciences, and humanities. This broad knowledge of the wider world can prepare students to deal successfully with complexity, diversity, and change.

?In medieval European universities, the seven liberal arts were grammar, rhetoric, and logic (the trivium) and geometry, arithmetic, music, and astronomy (the quadrivium).

However, in modern colleges and universities, the liberal arts include the study of literature, languages, philosophy, history, mathematics, and science as the basis of a general, or liberal, education.

Today's liberal arts programs have evolved far beyond their classical roots, opening doors to an expansive universe of subjects that enable students to adapt to new challenges and bring multiple perspectives to every problem they encounter.

How Liberal Arts differ from Specialized/ Vocational Education

We can picture the difference between Liberal Arts and Specialized/ Vocational Education as two different roadmaps to your future. One is a straight highway heading directly to a specific destination - that is specialized education. The other is more like a network of interconnected roads, offering multiple routes - that is liberal arts.

Specialized Education is laser-focused on specific professional skills and knowledge within one field. For instance, mechanical engineering. Meanwhile, Liberal Arts Embraces a broad spectrum of subjects, connecting humanities, sciences, arts, and social sciences.

A survey conducted by The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) found that 93 percent of employers agreed that all students should acquire broad knowledge in the liberal arts and science. As candidates demonstrated the capacity to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems is more important than their undergraduate major.

The same report by the AAC&U shows that liberal arts majors are on average making more money by their mid-50s than those who studied in professional and pre-professional fields, and they are employed at similar rates.

Today, there are hundreds of dedicated liberal arts colleges in the US and Europe with even more institutions offering a liberal arts program alongside other options.

Career prospects of Liberal Arts graduates

Now, you should be conversant with the unlimited benefits of choosing Liberal Arts. So that you can build your overview of the career prospects of this unique educational approach. Here are some:

1. Preparation for work in a variety of sectors: you will gain a strong foundation knowledge in a wider range of subjects than if you were to take a degree specializing in a single subject or vocation.

2. Discovering your professional potential: the concept of variety in Liberal Arts might surprise you as it helps uncover talents and interests you did not know you had.

3. Stepping stone toward career shift: such a flexible broad knowledge is very beneficial when you consider mobility in your work life.?

4. Interactivity with your community: it goes beyond academia; Liberal Arts strengthen your communication skills and open the doors for many opportunities to thrive in the world, communicate with and understand other members of the community, and have a broadened perspective.

When mentioning the career prospects and jobs can you get with a liberal studies degree, just be sure that interdisciplinary knowledge and skills gained from a liberal arts education will prepare you to join many work fields such as Education, Marketing, Interpretation, and many others.

In 2010, Steve Jobs famously said before passing away “In Apple’s DNA, technology alone is not enough. Technology should be married with liberal arts, married with the humanities that yields the results that make our hearts sing”.

Hence, at this point, we deduce that it is not just about accumulating knowledge, but about cultivating the most powerful skill of all: the ability to think, learn, and reinvent yourself continuously. Therefore, we can say the future belongs to those who can adapt, learn, and see beyond the conventional. Moreover, fundamentally, is the transformative promise of a liberal arts education.

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