The value of a liberal arts degree?

[Anonymous]

I don't know why there's all this debate about terminology and numbers when the post is about a study on the return on investment from degrees from liberal arts colleges. The study defines the terms based on higher ed classification system and presents the numbers based on data. What people feel the term "liberal arts" means or what they think the return on liberal arts colleges is doesn't really matter if they don't engage with the data/study design. Look at the study, its design, its data sources and classifications, its findings, if you want to critique.

Based on the data, I think there's strong support for liberal arts college degree's economic value when you look at lifetime return on investment rather than the more traditionally used 6-10 year income levels compared to other public and private universities. However, I would want to see if they separated the data out by parental income when calculating the return on investment--for instance, do middle class kids who go to liberal arts colleges experience similar strong returns on investment as upper middle class/wealthy kids who likely have more parental connections (but also likely paid less for their liberal arts college degree). I don't think this study did (not every study can do everything and they were looking at institutional level variables (e.g., % of Pell grant recipients, % of STEM majors) not individual. But I'm curious about that. I personally think the trend would likely still hold, but maybe not to the same degree, due to the advantages of having wealthy connections. But I could be wrong, mc kids could do better due to the lower cost of the college for lower income (investment) and perhaps a stronger motivation to earn income if you don't have family money (return on investment).

[Anonymous]

Isn't there a decline in the number of liberal arts degrees? I read this not long ago, in an article by a reputable writer. He'd commented that the number of English majors at Michigan had dropped from 1,000 to 200 over the last 20 years (I think). The argument was that liberal arts faculties were so politicized that it was turning off prospective students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand why you all argue over things you could just look up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education

Liberal arts is about the subject matter. It is not about the structure of the college or university. There are small colleges that are not liberal arts schools (e.g. Colorado School of Mines) because the subject matter they teach is technical professional training.

Yes but the term liberal arts college is about structure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Isn't there a decline in the number of liberal arts degrees? I read this not long ago, in an article by a reputable writer. He'd commented that the number of English majors at Michigan had dropped from 1,000 to 200 over the last 20 years (I think). The argument was that liberal arts faculties were so politicized that it was turning off prospective students.

Liberal arts is more than humanities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand why you all argue over things you could just look up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education

Liberal arts is about the subject matter. It is not about the structure of the college or university. There are small colleges that are not liberal arts schools (e.g. Colorado School of Mines) because the subject matter they teach is technical professional training.

Yes but the term liberal arts college is about structure.

The study is about the return on investment of a degree from a liberal arts college, not from a broad-based concept of "liberal arts education" which applies to a wide variety of institutions. You're looking up the wrong term for to assess the findings of this study.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Isn't there a decline in the number of liberal arts degrees? I read this not long ago, in an article by a reputable writer. He'd commented that the number of English majors at Michigan had dropped from 1,000 to 200 over the last 20 years (I think). The argument was that liberal arts faculties were so politicized that it was turning off prospective students.

Liberal arts is more than humanities.

Sure. But politics are across all the liberal arts disciplines these days. And that's the point. It's not necessarily the same liberal arts education from the past.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Isn't there a decline in the number of liberal arts degrees? I read this not long ago, in an article by a reputable writer. He'd commented that the number of English majors at Michigan had dropped from 1,000 to 200 over the last 20 years (I think). The argument was that liberal arts faculties were so politicized that it was turning off prospective students.

Liberal arts is more than humanities.

Sure. But politics are across all the liberal arts disciplines these days. And that's the point. It's not necessarily the same liberal arts education from the past.

Please give us more info that you totally made up without any justification or backing data. It's really useful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A humanities major from a directional state university is going to be outlearned by a STEM major from a similar second tier college. But most STEM majors are from directional state colleges and they don't outearn humanities majors at elite colleges. If your DC is among the brightest 1/2 percent of students and gets into a top tier school, you don't need to worry about what they choose to study and their future career options. They are smart enough to figure out their own path.

I can't even begin to unpack the blatant assumptions and generalizations on this post.

Example: You likely think UIUC is a "directional state college" (even though it's a university). It in fact has excellent STEM programs and a STEM grad from UIUC likely would outearn a humanities major at a so-called "elite" college.

Typically, directional state colleges/universities are the non-flagship public institutions with a compass direction in their name. So Urbana-Champaign isn't called a directional school while Carbondale (Southern Illinois), Eastern Illinois, and Northeastern Illinois would. The most common jobs for elite college humanities students are Wall Street and McKinsey/Bain/BCG where they earn about the same salary as compsci grads from Illinois their first year (but much more in bonuses), and a lot more every year afterwards. The compsci grads from the directional schools start out earning a lot less and have a much flatter trajectory.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The PP was not using the term “liberal arts college” correctly.

Precision of language is important, and has been sorely lacking in this thread.

UVA does not have a liberal arts college; it has a CLAS. There is a key difference between the two.

Which is what?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The PP was not using the term “liberal arts college” correctly.

Precision of language is important, and has been sorely lacking in this thread.

UVA does not have a liberal arts college; it has a CLAS. There is a key difference between the two.

Which is what?

The student experience is vastly different between being at a liberal arts college versus a CLAS--housed within a university--because of the access the latter gives students to graduate programs. Of course, liberal arts colleges have some graduate programs, but by definition they have fewer than research universities (hence why they're not called research universities).

For some students, access to graduate departments--and the requisite research opportunities and opportunity to build connections with professors who are leaders in their fields--doesn't matter because it doesn't align with their career goals, but for others it's really important.

The other thing is access to professional schools, which most research universities have. If your university has a business school, for example, as an undergrad econ major you can often take upper-level courses at the business school. This isn't possible at LACs, which almost never have business schools. Likewise, of course, with the law and medical schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The PP was not using the term “liberal arts college” correctly.

Precision of language is important, and has been sorely lacking in this thread.

UVA does not have a liberal arts college; it has a CLAS. There is a key difference between the two.

Which is what?

The student experience is vastly different between being at a liberal arts college versus a CLAS--housed within a university--because of the access the latter gives students to graduate programs. Of course, liberal arts colleges have some graduate programs, but by definition they have fewer than research universities (hence why they're not called research universities).

For some students, access to graduate departments--and the requisite research opportunities and opportunity to build connections with professors who are leaders in their fields--doesn't matter because it doesn't align with their career goals, but for others it's really important.

The other thing is access to professional schools, which most research universities have. If your university has a business school, for example, as an undergrad econ major you can often take upper-level courses at the business school. This isn't possible at LACs, which almost never have business schools. Likewise, of course, with the law and medical schools.

I get that CLAS is part of a larger university, with multiple component schools (unlike LACs), but I don't agree with the gist of your argument. The educational approach (liberal arts) between CLAS and the LAC will be similar. The potential majors (humanities, arts, physical sciences, etc.) will be similar. They are both distinguished from schools like nursing, engineering, etc. A fair number of LACs will have business. Both W&L and Richmond have business, for instance.

The study in question likely isolated LACs because it is a truer test of the value of liberal arts. The ROI was, relatively speaking, quite high on average over time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Isn't there a decline in the number of liberal arts degrees? I read this not long ago, in an article by a reputable writer. He'd commented that the number of English majors at Michigan had dropped from 1,000 to 200 over the last 20 years (I think). The argument was that liberal arts faculties were so politicized that it was turning off prospective students.

Liberal arts is more than humanities.

Sure. But politics are across all the liberal arts disciplines these days. And that's the point. It's not necessarily the same liberal arts education from the past.

Please give us more info that you totally made up without any justification or backing data. It's really useful.

Shrugs. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that the education taught at liberal arts schools, at least many of them, is not the same as in the past. The objectives are different. Changes in the faculty, changes in the types of courses being taught, changes in the disciplines, changes in the attitudes and especially the approach in the critical analysis of the subject matter, which is a big part of the liberal arts philosophy. That itself means the education has changed. Some will see it as changing for the better, others will not.

The below is an extraction from an interview with James Oakes, who's a prominent US historian. It was posted on the World Wide Socialist website:

Q. Can you address the role of identity politics on the campus? How is it to try to do so serious work under these conditions?

A. Well, my sense is that among graduate students the identitarians stay away from me, and they badger the students who are interested in political and economic history. They have a sense of their own superiority. The political historians tend to feel besieged.

The reflection of identity politics in the curriculum is the primacy of cultural history. There was a time, a long, long time ago, when a “diverse history faculty” meant that you had an economic historian, a political historian, a social historian, a historian of the American Revolution, of the Civil War, and so on. And now a diverse history faculty means a women’s historian, a gay historian, a Chinese-American historian, a Latino historian. So it’s a completely different kind of diversity.
On a global scale the benefit of this has been tremendous. We have more—and we should have more—African history, Latin American history, Asian history, than we ever have. Within US history it has produced narrow faculties in which everybody is basically writing the same thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For some students, access to graduate departments--and the requisite research opportunities and opportunity to build connections with professors who are leaders in their fields--doesn't matter because it doesn't align with their career goals, but for others it's really important.

The flaw in your logic is the assumption that professors at LACs aren't doing research. They are; and in fact at an LAC there are no grad students competing for the positions working with them. So the situation you mention is the opposite of the fact. You will likely form better relationships with your professors and have a better chance at a research position (key for grad school) if you are at an LAC.

Dig all the LACs on this list:

https://collegematchus.com/ranking-the-colleges-top-colleges-that-feed-alumni-into-grad-school-programs/

And then check out this article:

The children of professors are far more likely to attend liberal arts colleges than other parents. Children of university faculty are about twice as likely to select liberal arts college than children of parents earning more than $100,000 a year.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/where-professors-send-their-children-to-college/

So much wrong in this thread. If you are new to the college process, please disregard all the stupid comments here and do your own research.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Shrugs. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that the education taught at liberal arts schools, at least many of them, is not the same as in the past.

Yeah, apparently it does.

Knee jerk politics is not useful here. This is a college forum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For some students, access to graduate departments--and the requisite research opportunities and opportunity to build connections with professors who are leaders in their fields--doesn't matter because it doesn't align with their career goals, but for others it's really important.

The flaw in your logic is the assumption that professors at LACs aren't doing research. They are; and in fact at an LAC there are no grad students competing for the positions working with them. So the situation you mention is the opposite of the fact. You will likely form better relationships with your professors and have a better chance at a research position (key for grad school) if you are at an LAC.

Dig all the LACs on this list:

https://collegematchus.com/ranking-the-colleges-top-colleges-that-feed-alumni-into-grad-school-programs/

And then check out this article:

The children of professors are far more likely to attend liberal arts colleges than other parents. Children of university faculty are about twice as likely to select liberal arts college than children of parents earning more than $100,000 a year.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/where-professors-send-their-children-to-college/

So much wrong in this thread. If you are new to the college process, please disregard all the stupid comments here and do your own research.

I'm not new to the college process. However, I used to be in academia, my sister is in academia now, and my husband works in higher ed administration. So I know a little something about academic research.

Of course professors at LACs still do research; however, it's just a fact that, generally speaking, they have a higher teaching load and less time for research than most professors at R1 research universities.