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Putting Liberal Education on the Radar Screen

From Sept. 23, 2005 Chronicle of Higher Education (Chronicle Review)

By CAROL GEARY SCHNEIDER and DEBRA HUMPHREYS

As we prepare for the next round of college applications, what issues are on everyone's minds? We will be admitting one of the largest classes ever to pursue a college degree. Many applicants are, no doubt, preoccupied with such pressing questions as whether they will do well on the SAT or make the right college choice. Their parents might be worrying about tuition costs, and policy makers about continuing to increase access to higher education, improving graduation rates, decreasing college costs, and putting into effect new forms of institutional accountability. But what about learning?

The national conversations about affordability, access, graduation rates, and accountability are important, of course. But we also need a parallel public conversation about the kinds of learning today's graduates need -- a conversation that directly engages students and their parents.

With increasing urgency, employers in a wide array of sectors are calling for graduates who are skilled communicators, scientifically literate, adept at quantitative reasoning, oriented to innovation, sophisticated about diversity, and grounded in cross-cultural exchange.

Civic leaders are expressing concern about declining rates of civic knowledge among the young and what that might mean for the future of our democracy. What we call "liberal education" has long responded to such important public concerns, now in new ways, as colleges are experimenting with how to meet 21st-century needs -- for example through asking undergraduates to conduct research, thematically linking a series of courses, and promoting service learning, to name but a few strategies.

There is little evidence, however, that the public is aware of such changes in liberal education, or that high-school students and their parents have been part of any discussion about what graduates need to know in today's world. Is it any wonder that some students have come to see the college degree as just a ticket to be punched on the way to their first job?

Although liberal education has changed over time, it has always been concerned with cultivating intellectual and ethical judgment, helping students comprehend and negotiate their relationships with the larger world, and preparing them for lives of civic responsibility and leadership. It is a philosophy of education rather than a set of majors or a curriculum at a particular kind of institution. It is a focus not just at small liberal-arts colleges, but throughout higher education.

Today it helps students, both in their general-education courses and in their major fields of study, analyze important contemporary issues like the social, cultural, and ethical dimensions of the AIDS crisis or meeting the needs of an aging population.

But liberal education and what it means have slipped off the public radar screen. That's why the Association of American Colleges and Universities has begun a decade-long campaign, Liberal Education and America's Promise: Excellence for Everyone as a Nation Goes to College, to expand public understanding of the value of a liberal education.

In preparation for the campaign, we organized a series of eight focus groups with college juniors and seniors and college-bound high-school students from four regions of the country. The responses from all eight groups are serious and sobering.

Today's high-school students are largely uninformed about the college curriculum and uncertain about its demands, while the resources available to guide their preparation for college life are very limited.

Students do not regard high-school guidance counselors or colleges themselves as trusted sources of information. Operating in a vacuum, they have little understanding of the kinds of learning that either their future employers or their faculty members see as important. While some believe that the college degree is little more than a "piece of paper," most students do recognize that something important goes on during the college years. The problem is they don't really know what that "something" is or ought to be.

We asked our focus groups to examine a list of college outcomes and identify which are the most and least important to them. The rankings produced across the groups are remarkably consistent. What students most value is their own preparation for professional success. They believe that such things as maturity, work habits, self-discipline, and time management are what they need to achieve in college. A few of the college juniors and seniors also recognize the importance of communication, problem solving, and critical thinking. Whether they rank those outcomes high or low, however, none of the students we interviewed identify specific courses, assignments, or activities that help prepare them to meet those outcomes.

The most alarming finding has to do with what both current and prospective students consider the least important outcomes of a college
education: values and ethics, an appreciation of cultural diversity, global awareness, and civic responsibility. When we further asked students about the importance of deepening their knowledge of American culture and history, of cultures outside the United States, and of scientific knowledge and its importance in the world -- three staples of a strong liberal education -- each ranked at the bottom of desired outcomes.

Today's students understand that college is important to their success in the work force, but they do not recognize its role in preparing them as citizens, community participants, and thoughtful people. They do not expect college to enable them to better understand the wider world; they view college as a private rather than a public good.

As a result, they also seem to believe that learning is mostly about individual development and simple information transfer. That is why they tend to think that if they have already studied a topic in high school (for example, American history or science), there is no logical reason to ever study it again. Moreover, we found little difference between the outcomes valued by high-school seniors and those valued by college students. That suggests that colleges are not conveying the importance of liberal education to their students.

Indeed, our focus-group findings indicate a profound lack of understanding about the tradition of liberal education. We found that high-school students are almost entirely unfamiliar with the term "liberal education" and that college students are only somewhat familiar with it. Some of those who have heard the term tend to associate it only with traditional liberal arts and sciences, rather than with a broader philosophy of education important for all students, whatever their chosen field of study. Some think it occurs only in the arts and humanities, rather than in the sciences. Among those students who associate liberal education with learning critical thinking, almost all see it only as something that happens in those parts of the curriculum considered "general education," rather than in detailed studies in particular fields.

The confusion goes on. For some students, a liberal education is one that is politically skewed to the left. As one college student put it, it is "education directed toward alternative methods, most often political in nature." Another college student remarked, "Initially, I thought and heard of 'liberal' as in Democrats and politics. I am conservative, so my initial reaction was to brace myself, set up a defense of my values."

The lack of understanding among students -- and their parents -- about what a liberal education is matters profoundly to the futures of the students themselves. It matters to how well prepared they will be as the workers of tomorrow and as citizens in our democracy. But it also matters to the future of that democracy. We have long passed the time when we could worry only about preparing the elite, the leaders of society. In today's complex and global environment, shouldn't we aspire to provide a liberal education to all who pursue a college degree?

That is what we need to be talking about -- and not just among ourselves.

/Carol Geary Schneider is president, and Debra Humphreys is vice president for communications and public affairs, at the Association of American Colleges and Universities./