Harry Targ
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) was
founded in 1973 as an organization of corporations, lobby groups, and
state-level politicians to propose and implement model legislation;
prioritizing such policies as promoting educational vouchers and charter
schools, limiting the role of trade unions,
restricting environmental regulations, and instituting voter identification
rules. ALEC has established think tanks that address key issues of public
policy. One such issue is education.
In a 2015 article Lindsey Russell, an ALEC Director
of its Education Task Force, wrote an essay entitled “STEM-Will It Replace
Liberal Arts?” In it he reports Bureau of Labor Statistics projections that
from 2012-2022 there will be a growth of 13 percent in the STEM related
workforce. As a result he poses the question reflected in the title of his
article. His answer, although he does not say so directly is a qualified “yes.”
He does quote a Forbes magazine
article that suggests that STEM graduates need “critical thinking skills” to
pursue their careers. These skills, the article asserts, along with those in
communication, are what a Liberal Arts education can provide. In an interesting
statement he says about STEM and Liberal Arts:
“STEM is the present and the future, and STEM
related fields are projected to grow by more than 1 million by the year
2022….Liberal arts education may seem irrelevant today, but it is necessary if
America’s youth are to become successful members of today’s STEM-dominated
workforce.”
Although not central to discussions of the vitality
of the Liberal Arts, it is useful to briefly refer to empirical studies that
challenge the claims about preparing for a “STEM-dominated workforce.” Such
analyses, and claims about shortcomings in the American educational system, go
back as far as the Soviet Union’s launch of “Sputnik.” In a 2014 volume, Michael Teitelbaum, Falling Behind? Boom, Bust and the Global Race for Scientific Talent,
Princeton Press, challenges the periodically claimed view that the United
States is somehow “falling behind” in the production of scientists and
engineers and in his words, “advocates of these shortage claims have had a
nearly open field in politics and the media.”
In addition, in a Bureau of Labor Statistics Monthly Labor Review, May 2015 article
entitled, “STEM Crisis or STEM Surplus? Yes and Yes,” the following conclusions
are reached based upon extensive research:
*Since the STEM labor market is heterogeneous there
are both shortages and surpluses depending on the particular job market
segment.”
*In the academic market there are noticeable
oversupplies of Ph.D’s.
*In some sectors of government jobs there are
shortages of STEM-trained personnel.
*In the private sector, there are some areas were
STEM demand is great, in others where oversupply exists.
*Levels of oversupply or demand vary by geographic
region.
Perhaps the most damning statement on STEM training
and jobs comes from an article by Hal Salzman, “STEM Grads Are at a Loss,” US News, Sept. 15, 2014 declaring that:
“All credible research finds the same evidence about the STEM workforce: ample
supply, stagnant wages and, by
industry accounts, thousands of applicants for
any advertised job.”
While debates continue about the need to prioritize
STEM in the educational process, a more important discussion should involve the
substance and role of what usually is called “the Liberal Arts.” Should Liberal
Arts be seen as only a training ground for honing critical thinking and
communications skills or does the Liberal Arts project go much deeper? Henry Giroux,
Professor of English and Cultural Studies, McMasters University, Hamilton,
Ontario, posted an essay he called “Neoliberal Savagery and the Assault on Higher
Education as a Democratic Public Space,” on September 15, 2016. His language is
vivid, his critique of the growing connections between higher education and
market needs is controversial. His grounding of the political pressures to
change and marginalize Liberal Arts has its roots in the theory and practice of
neoliberal ideology, an ideology based on a crude vision of markets,
privatization of public institutions, and the reduction of all of social life
to commodification.
The most important element of Giroux’s essay is the
proposition that the university represents a “public trust” and a “social good.”
He correctly claims that in an age of
concentrating media and a profusion of unsubstantiated information on the
internet, the university remains a scarce and valuable venue for exposing young
people to rich, complicated discourse and analysis of society—past, present,
and future. Giroux’s words ring true in this regard as he claims the university
is “a critical institution infused with
the promise of cultivating intellectual insight, the civic imagination,
inquisitiveness, risk-taking, social responsibility, and the struggle for
justice.” Giroux quotes Zygmunt Bauman and Leonidas Donskis: “how will we form
the next generation of intellectuals and politicians if young people will never
have an opportunity to experience what a non-vulgar, non-pragmatic,
non-instrumental university is like?”
The tasks cultural theorists such as Giroux lay out
do not, or should not, suggest that only through Liberal Arts can the civic
responsibility of the university be maintained. But, and this is critical, Liberal Arts should be seen as a necessary
partner in the intellectual development of each and every student and should be
a vibrant contributor to the larger society in which we live.
Conceiving of
Liberal Arts as just a limited instrumentality of a narrowly defined STEM
education, as advocates such as the ALEC spokesperson above suggests, demeans
not only the fundamental importance of the Liberal Arts for pursuing an
intellectually curious and socially just society but the basic project of
higher education.
