This graphic was created from comments received by faculty and staff relating to liberal arts education. The larger the font, the more often the word appeared in their statements. Seattle University https://www.seattleu.edu/artsci/about/value-of-liberal-arts-education/
Harry Targ
Originally posted September22, 2016
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 where 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.
