I already shared my sink or swim argument for liberal arts and why I think the model for liberal arts sucks given liberal arts students have to work much harder given the lack of resources afforded to them. Some of these students will excel, many will not however because most people don’t want to jump through hoops like liberal arts will force you to when compared to big colleges and universities that provide significantly more resources to you directly that will prepare you for the job market (relevant coursework, more recruiting, etc).
Here are the ultimate questions with this topic: how do liberal arts students compete against non liberal arts students in the job market 0-2 years out of school? What are the selling points for these liberal arts students? Why are they “better” than their counterparts at Stanford or MIT? To answer this, liberal arts students aren’t better. Their selling point is, “I can learn quickly” or “I have a broad set of skills and I’m used to working in many different domains” – this is all bullshit. I have asked many professors about why liberal arts is valuable and they have given me similar points above. They refer to a liberal arts as a process where you fill your proverbial “toolbox” with skills like communicating, public speaking, writing, etc. But there is just one problem with this line of reasoning – if you tell me that the value in liberal arts is that you develop your ability to write, communicate, learn, etc, you’re suggesting that the kids at non-liberal arts schools like Stanford and MIT don’t know how to write or communicate well, which I believe is bullshit on steroids.
Here is the reality – liberal arts is complete bullshit. The only reason there is any perceived merit to liberal arts is that there are alumni from these schools that go on to do well. A few of the CEO’s on Wall Street went to a NESCAC school – Goldman (Hamilton) and Barclays (Bowdoin) to be specific. I make the argument that these people that go onto to succeed do so because they are gifted individuals, not because liberal arts somehow uniquely morphed them into a successful person. For example, Williams College has a mean or median (I don’t remember the precise statistic) of a 35 on the ACT. That means, the average kid at Williams is in the top 1% of ACT test takers. You’re telling me liberal arts is special because the alumni go onto to do great things in their respective domain: law, technology, public service, research – I say these people go onto to great things because they were already in the top 1% of their peers in high school…
With that being said, I think liberal arts should be modified. Liberal arts students struggle the first few years out of school. Many don’t have the skills needed for jobs and when you compete against folks that do have these skills and backgrounds (think MIT, Stanford, UT Austin), liberal arts kids are getting crushed. I think there is a pseudo solution to this preparation problem. The fundamental constraint is that you cannot erode away the meaning of liberal arts. I think of this meaning as, “teach kids a little about a lot” to prepare them for life. I think there is a way to make the liberal arts model better, while also not eroding away this meaning of liberal arts. You should still teach students broad subjects, teach them to think, give them a diverse experience to material just like the assortment of goodies brought out at a tea time on the three tiered tray…
But make sure that these kids are employable! Force kids to take their divisional requirements that teach them about gay propaganda in Russia and being trans in America but make sure you’re at a bare minimum providing resources for them to get hired in areas they find meaningful and interesting. I do not give a shit what the narrative is, but what it should be is, you go to school to get a decent job. What exactly is the purpose of going to college, and one that charges closer to $100,000 than $0, if you aren’t competitive on the job market? You go to college to get hired and increase your life time earning potential, that is the whole appeal of college. You make an investment in your level of human capital so you can earn more than if you did not have a degree. If you’re going to school, and paying as much as you are, and can’t find a job, what the hell is the point?
So what is the solution?
At a bare minimum, provide intro classes, and intro classes alone, for topics like finance, accounting, industry software development (managing teams, code bases, learning Agile, Waterfall development, product management), design, venture capital, private equity, etc. Give students enough talking points in a field like venture, technology, finance, so that they can take the 95% of the classes taken apart of the liberal arts core where you learn about transgender identity and homosexual propaganda, and morph the two together so they’re still that strong broad based liberal arts student who is used to diverse backgrounds and topics, but also able to draw on their experiences from intro VC/PE/IBD, technology, product management, courses to excel in interviews to land the role. What this does is help students out of school when interviewing. They are able to speak the language of the industry, they are able to network in those classes (assuming alums from the college in the space they are learning about: product management, investment banking, private equity, are willing to contribute and connect with students (99.99% alums would)), and most critically, because you are only teaching intro classes, you don’t degrade the liberal arts mission and values. One of the biggest pushbacks against the classes I’ve mentioned at a liberal arts school is that they are perceived as being diametrically opposed to the goal of liberal arts goal of teaching students a little about a lot and not “training” anyone for one specific path in life. Well there are a few points here. Firstly this is bullshit. Two words, computer science. If your goal is to not “train” people for a specific industry as a liberal arts school, you should get rid of the computer science major because thousands upon thousands of kids major in CS and get fed into the technology industry – doesn’t that oppose your core belief(s) that students should not be taking classes that prepare them for a single industry? More realistically, you should get rid of this faulty idea that liberal arts shouldn’t prepare kids for a particular industry given the classes offered at the institution. Liberal arts at its core tries to make it feel that wanting to go into a certain industry is bad. This might be a contentious point, but ask yourself, if so many kids from liberal arts schools go into investment banking or technology, why are there so little tech and finance jobs taught and sponsored by the college…? It’s because they don’t want to support this push into specific fields. These colleges seem not to mind where kids go to work when they are asking alumni for donation checks, but they certainly seem to be opposed to helping kids get into these jobs that go on to fuel their endowment… hm suspicious.
The second point I have to make about offering these highly specialized intro courses is that offering the bare minimum of these classes does not degrade the liberal arts values of not preparing students for specific industries. You teach students about black trans poetry and Bayesian statistics because you think it will help their perspectives and their “toolboxes”; does knowing about the basics of how accounting and a balance sheet work not do the same of providing useful tools for students that will have to deal with balance sheets and reading documents relating to financial performance? Does teaching people about the basics of entrepreneurship not help create more well rounded students? What about teaching students the principles of design thinking? Does teaching people how to think in a more structured manner not fit the agenda of teaching students at a liberal arts college to be well rounded and diverse thinkers?
I think the real issue are the folks at the top of the institution like the president, the trustees, and the tenured faculty. These are the same people that don’t want to add flashing lights on the sidewalks to ensure the safety of their students because the flashing lights would [degrade the aesthetics of the campus]. Let’s be practical, ammend the curriculum so you maintain the flavor of liberal arts by “teaching a little about a a lot”, but also add classes that make liberal arts students competitive in the job market in those first few years. It is ridiculously absurd that kids pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to these schools, just so they can be lied to about how valuable their education is and so they can cram for an interview about “discounted cash flows” and “agile methodologies” instead of being taught about this stuff that they want to pursue for 40+ years! Give the kids the bare minimum to succeed in the domains they may want with the actual curriculum offered. Don’t give the kids a database of alumni for them to spend hundreds of hours learning about professions outside of class – make this knowledge integrated into the curriculum via intro courses to 10-12 areas: Venture Capital, Investment Banking, Accounting, Graphic Design, Product Management, Entrepreneurship, Private Equity, etc.
What the Coronavirus pandemic has shown us is that liberal arts students have nothing to offer to employers in that first job out of school. You apply to a job alongside 499 other applicants for that new grad role at X company doing Y role. You are applying alongside students from Wharton, Harvard, UMichigan, MIT, Stanford, and the rest. On paper, you have nothing of specific value to add. You didn’t take the sexy classes that your counterparts have, you haven’t had the same prior internships and work experiences, and you most likely are a larger liability to the hiring company because of your shortcomings compared to your competition. You may be able to read, write, communicate, and bring a diverse perspective, but odds are you also bring a pain in the ass to your line manager who has to train you and take you from being a company liability in the first few weeks/months to a productive team member. Most people will struggle in the job market – not just liberal arts students – but the issue resides when liberal arts representatives try to make the education seem superior and more valuable than other institutions when in reality, the education places a burden on new graduate students in their most vulnerable years (0-2 years out of school). This burden comes from these liberal arts students being relatively under prepared for the roles they want when compared to their counterparts at other institutions that have more resources and courses provided by their college. Why not help these liberal arts students by offering a tiny amount of real world classwork? What is the danger in one class on design thinking, entrepreneurship, front end web development, learning about project management, etc? Does a single applied class degrade the value of liberal arts if you are taking 1-2 of these classes out of your 32 total classes in college (in the case of Williams you have 32 classes)?
Here is the question, does the world end if you offer 10 introduction classes on the above classes: Venture Capital, Investment Banking, Accounting, Graphic Design, Product Management, Entrepreneurship, Private Equity, etc ? Are the benefits greater than the costs? Would you help students with this approach by helping them find jobs, mitigate stress and depression, and expand the life time earning of these alumni (and the amount of money they can give to your school over their life tine) if you help them get higher paying/more appealing jobs earlier in their career by providing better resources that prepare them relative to their competition?
Food for thought I guess.
🥵Magnus's Gameplan for Sticking it to the F'ing Man!🥵 