Artes Liberales The View from Here

“After the Liberal Arts,” a talk he deliv- very undergraduate enrolled at ered at Williams in February, summed up Williams this year is a member of the extent to which American higher education has changed in recent decades a tiny, highly select minority—the with two observations: 1) Half of all E Americans now have some exposure to 3 percent of all college students in the higher education at one or another United States who have chosen a liberal in the course of their lives; 2) For most of these people, the word “college” does not arts education over early professional connote the liberal arts. training. By Zelda Stern In the face of this movement toward greater earlier specialization in American ASIDE FROM A BRIEF SURGE closure or by merger. By 1994, of the higher education, an uncertain economy, after World War II, the proportion of 3,941 institutions of higher education in a tougher job market for college gradu- undergraduate degrees awarded each the United States, the Carnegie ates and the increasing costs of providing year in the liberal arts has been declining Foundation for the Advancement of and pursuing an education in the liberal for 100 years. At an American Council Teaching classified only 202, or about arts, some critics have charged that the of Learned Societies (ACLS) Conference 5 percent, as liberal arts colleges—that broad general education provided by a on Liberal Arts Colleges in American is, institutions awarding at least half liberal arts college is an anachronism—a Higher Education, held at Williams last their degrees in the liberal arts. luxury individuals and society no longer November, Williams President Emeritus As the higher education pie grows can afford. Francis Oakley outlined the downward larger, serving more and more people, the What is the graduate of a liberal trajectory: As recently as the mid-1950s, liberal arts slice shrinks in proportion to arts college like Williams (not to men- approximately 50 percent of all institu- the whole. Today, the most popular tion the parents who have paid for this tions of higher education in the United undergraduate major in the United education) to make of such charges? States were liberal arts. By the early States—accounting for 20 percent of all Given current economic realities, of 1970s, that share had fallen to 25 per- bachelor’s degrees awarded annually—is what use is a in cent. The decline in the share of student business. Another 10 percent of degrees today’s world—to the individual, to enrollments was even greater, from are conferred in education; 7 percent in society, to prospective employers?

man 25 percent in the mid-1950s to 8 percent one of the health professions. Almost by the early 1970s. twice as many degrees are awarded each College: A Recent Phenomenon To some extent, the decline has not year in social work as in all foreign A little more than a century ago in simply been proportionate. Between languages and literatures combined. the United States, it was possible to 1967 and 1990, some 167 private, four- Noted author, scholar and New become a doctor, lawyer or

Illustrations by Whitney Sher year colleges disappeared, either by Yorker contributor Louis Menand, in without ever going to college. In the

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The term “liberal arts” connotes a certain elevation above utilitarian concerns. Yet liberal education is intensely useful. — George F.Will, Washington Post columnist

1869-70 academic year, regardless of birth, possessed technical as part of the Cold War competition for What does the increasing prevalence higher education have been those whose for example, half the stu- expertise. If a liberal arts education scientific supremacy—increased the of early specialization mean for under- faculties, facilities and resources are still dents at Harvard Law remained an optional luxury for these number of American undergraduates by graduate institutions like Williams that attracting large numbers of students— School and nearly three- people, the college would wither away; nearly 500 percent. In the 1960s alone, still do provide a liberal education? As it in other words, the strongest, best- quarters of the students at and, in fact, there was evidence in the college enrollments more than doubled. turns out, not much. While the percent- endowed, most selective private liberal Harvard Medical School 1860s, cited with alarm by educators, At the peak of this expansion, new age share of liberal arts enrollments in arts colleges and in the did not have undergradu- that the proportion of Americans community college campuses were relation to the growing number of total country. In the hierarchy of American ate degrees. In 1868, 19 attending college was in steep decline. opening in the United States at the rate student enrollments in institutions of higher education, liberal arts institutions of the 411 medical stu- By making college the gateway to the of one per week. In this climate of higher learning has fallen, it is not at all like Williams remain at the top. dents at the of Michigan and professions, Eliot not only linked the growth and prosperity, the liberal arts clear that the actual number of students none of the 387 law students there held college to the rising fortunes of this new flourished. The proportion of degrees pursuing the liberal arts has declined. Philosopher or Engineer? prior degrees of any kind. Dartmouth’s class, he enabled it to preserve its anti- awarded annually in the liberal arts rose The institutions that have been able If the shift toward greater earlier Chandler Scientific School, founded in utilitarian ethos in an increasingly for the first time in a century. to survive the financial pressures brought specialization in American higher 1851, admitted students as young as 14; secular and utilitarian age. ‘The practi- This brief flowering of the liberal on by the leveling off of the college-age education has had little impact on the by 1868, the school had 104 graduates, cal spirit and the literary or scholastic arts, however, turned out to be an population and the increased costs of selective liberal arts college, what are none of whom had been to college. Until spirit are both good, but they are incom- anomaly. In the 1970s a sharp decline in 1860, Yale’s Sheffield Scientific School patible,’ [Eliot] explained in his Atlantic college-age youths and an economic had no admission requirements at all. Monthly article. ‘If commingled, they recession brought higher education This state of affairs continued until are both spoiled.’ Liberalization is the expansion to a halt. Faced with falling Origin of the “Liberal Arts” around the turn of the century, when prerequisite for specialization. It has enrollments, many colleges began to educational reformer and Harvard been the pattern in American education offer more courses with a direct lthough the business of trying to define what purpose higher President Charles William Eliot, appalled ever since.” application to work. Since then, while education should serve dates at least to and Aristotle, the at what he perceived to be a lack of While a liberal arts education is still still paying lip service to the liberal arts, Aterm “liberal arts” derives from the Medieval artes uniform standards in American higher the gateway to certain professions, American higher education has become liberales—artes meaning “subjects of study,” and liberales meaning education, succeeded in making an pursuit of a liberal arts degree is now far more and more professionally oriented. “proper to free persons.” In the medieval European university, “liberal undergraduate degree a prerequisite for from the norm. This fact often surprises Anthony P. Carnevale, a labor economist arts” referred to the seven branches of learning considered suitable for attending Harvard’s professional the parents and grandparents of current and vice president at the Educational freemen: grammar, and (the ), leading to a Bachelor schools. Menand, in his talk at Williams, Williams students—those generations Testing Service in Princeton, N.J., of Arts; and arithmetic, , astronomy and music (the quadrivium), credited this act with reversing the who came of age during the golden era observed in an Aug. 3, 2003, New York leading to the Master of Arts. During the Renaissance, people began to course of liberal arts education. of higher education between the end of article, “Careers: The Undecided”: use “liberal arts” more broadly to describe studies aimed at imparting a “Eliot’s reform, once it had been World War II and the end of the Vietnam “The American higher education system general rather than a vocational or professional education. Although the widely adopted, saved the liberal arts,” War. Between 1945 and 1975, three has become the work force training liberal arts curriculum has changed, this Renaissance usage holds today. Menand said. “Eliot saw that in an phenomena—the baby boom, a long system. It doesn’t like to see itself that Liberal arts in modern colleges and universities include the study of expanding nation, social and economic period of domestic economic growth and way. It perceives itself as … provid[ing] a literature, languages, , history, mathematics and the power was passing to people who, government support of higher education liberal education. It doesn’t.” (both the “hard” sciences and the social sciences).

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Note too that a faithful study of the liberal arts humanizes character and permits it not to be cruel. — Ovid, Ex Ponto, II, ix, 47

the implications for the liberal arts capable—of adapting later to the are essential to success in many profes- graduate? Does this trend and a particular needs of the professions and of sions and are often worth more to an tougher job market mean that a liberal public life, than would a person more employer than the possession of spe- arts education is less useful than it used narrowly trained—at an early age—in cific technical skills. to be? What real-life skills, if any, does specific subjects.” Professor Fix often tells this story to a liberal arts degree confer upon its From the point of view of the his students: “I once asked the personnel graduates? Or, as Williams Professor of prospective employer, a liberal arts director for a major aerospace company English Stephen Fix wrote in a response degree from a selective college still what kind of student he is most eager to paper for a panel on the mission of signals that you are among the most recruit. ‘I’ll always go for the philosophy liberal arts colleges at the ACLS confer- able of your generation and that you major,’ the personnel director said. ‘They ence at Williams last November, “If are more likely to be a person who has know nothing about aerospace, but they we, as liberal arts educators, aren’t broad interests, good analytical skills, know everything about complexity—and offering our students specialized or flexibility, the ability to communicate that’s what I need.’” professional training, what exactly are and the ability to learn. Such attributes In the end, of course, the usefulness we offering them?” of a liberal arts education is not just The classic response to this about getting a job. Professor Fix, in question is that a liberal arts answer to his own question, “If we, education develops general as liberal arts educators, aren’t intellectual skills—the ability to offering our students specialized or think critically, communicate professional training, what exactly clearly and pose and test are we offering them?” gave this illuminating hypotheses—that can answer at the conference: “We’re be applied to any situation. The offering them the past. The present liberal arts educator argues that and future too, of course: the latest the value of such education lies economic theory, the cutting-edge precisely in its emphasis on technique in genetics and so forth. breadth over specialization, on But above all, we are offering the moral ambitions over practical past—the story of where human results, on the development of the beings have been, what we have whole person over the honing of achieved, how we have failed. specific abilities for a specific slot. If anything is at the core of our Explains Fix, “The liberal arts mission, I’d say that’s it.” I claim is that the broadly educated person will be at least as Zelda Stern is a free-lance writer capable—and maybe more based in Williamstown, Mass.

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