Helluva strawman in the first paragraph.
Notice that I said most and usually, not all or always. A small fraction of them wind up in elite occupations such as journalism, entertainment, marketing, and government. These are the people who mold public opinion, and it's critical that there be some conservatives among them. Otherwise the mass media and entertainment industry will be even more politically correct and left-skewed than they already are.
Furthermore, having conservatives in the liberal arts is critical in order to keep alive the literary and artistic heritage of the West, i.e. so that Shakespeare and Beethoven aren't replaced by the Vagina Monologues and Kanye West.
College is so expansive now that it is essentially an investment. People who invest that much (and generally borrow to do so) want a return on their investment. And a liberal arts degree doesn’t hold much chance of returning that investment for most.
I have four college age kids. The oldest have Associates degrees. One is working toward her bachelors online and paying her way.
One wisely quit school after one semester realizing that what she wanted as a major would never pay enough to justify the degree.
Number three is a senior in a STEM related field, Aerospace Engineering. He has limited loans and will likely pay them off in a year or two.
Number four is registering to get his Class A CDL and wants to be a truck driver.
I told them early on that we’d help them with college expenses as we could if they were going into a field that required a legitimate degree, like engineering. Liberal arts-Not a chance.
Way too many philosophy majors working at Starbucks
Part of the problem is that liberal arts has been infiltrated with politics. When I was taught philosophy and Romantic poetry in college, it was straightforward with intelligent professors. The other problem is that there is, indeed, a prejudice by people in the hard sciences and technology against the humanities - even when taught properly. The comments that will follow mine will bear that out.
I got my liberal arts degree in the 1980s when it was still affordable. It made me more well rounded, well read, and gave me a foot in the door to a corporate career I’m still in. Anymore I’d only encourage someone to go for engineering or a hard science. Liberal arts has lost it’s bang for the buck.
Excellent article. Here’s my money quote:
“In short, the liberal arts is a giant roadblock on the path to socialism, so why wouldn’t the left want to undermine it?”
Consider Hillsdale College in Michigan. Focus on history, philosophy, etc. Even math and science majors benefit from thoughtful liberal arts education. I’m a professor of education who consistently criticizes the loads of pedagogical BS with which prospective teachers must suffer. I tell them that if I ran a school and could only teach one subject (other than reading and writing) it would be history. If I could teach one more it would be philosophy.
Our curriculum,” UD’s website says, “is based on a core that emphasizes the pursuit of truth and virtue in the classical Western tradition and the importance of academic rigor
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Liberal “Truths” that are “emphasized” to us all via MSM every day: sodomy is good, murdering babies out of the womb is good, lesbianism is good, hating cops is good, homelessness is good, illegal drug use is good, open borders are Great, urinating on the flag is good, burning the flag is better, we should hate our military is good, hating cops is good, killing cops is even better and I could go on and on and on. Liberalism is a “Disease” is GOOD for everybody to learn and take to heart.
The study of humanities is like a beautiful cake... but the communists who’ve taken over academia have filled that beautiful cake with rat poison.
A well rounded education includes liberal arts courses. The problem with today’s liberal arts is that they do not create a true thinking man.
At the same time most STEM programs as well as the liberal arts programs do not create what made this country great a ‘renaissance man’ that is acquainted with multiple areas of endeavor and able to use that wide range of knowledge to apply various solutions to difficult problems.
Some of the most intelligent people I have met in my 50 years of world travel - work with their hands and read, read, read.
Libs don’t want you studying humanities because that can lead to an appreciation of the heritage of Western civilization and the fundamental elements that underpin it.
With online webinars allowing real time participation why would you even need to attend a college for liberal arts?
You could say that for much of the STEM courses...though maybe science, tech and engineering classes require physical (hands on) participation in a lab setting. Chemistry, electrical circuitry, materials testing, soils engineering/testing...these classes require hands on participation.
One point not considered, many colleges expect the professors to offset their salary and equipment costs with research grants. The dirty little secret is that a social scientist might earn that grant doing some stupid survey and compiling the results in a paper. Meanwhile, just getting a grant in the hard sciences (from the Navy say, as professors I remember in engineering) is a significant hurtle followed by a lot of work.
I honestly don’t have any respect for the 14 hour per week social science professor preaching Marxism to students that will spend 20 years paying back loans that fund the professors near useless existence.
True, Western culture from Aristotle to Shakespeare functions as an antidote for this palpable nonsense, which is precisely why both of those luminaries are under attack as well. These are now derided as white, male, and irrelevant - note that it is not for what they say but who they were. This is a cheapening dilution of the sort of mental discipline that the liberal arts faculties used to pride themselves on teaching. Those who now do so are the exceptions, and they're a dying breed.
The university at which I used to work allowed its last Classics professor to retire without replacement, and now that program is closed down. In its place, I am informed by a relative who attends classes there, is a history professor who announced that the Romans built roads in straight lines due to toxic masculinity. I swear I am not making that up. That Classics professor, who was a friend of mine, would be shrieking at the insanity, but he's not there anymore and she is. It isn't a good trend.
The notion of STEM graduates being unquestioning button-pushers is not one that stands up to any particular scrutiny. On the contrary, that is the last redoubt of reason, the last stand of the idea that the laws of nature are not mutable through politics or social convention. When that idea returns to the philosophy faculty, call me.
A true liberal arts education serves an important function. The problem is that what seems to pass as “liberal arts” in most schools is neither liberal nor art.
A liberal arts education including western civilization, philosophy, fine arts and music enriches the life and contributes to making one a “whole person.”
“Womyns studies,” “Black studies,” “Queer studies,” etc are NOT majors in a REAL liberal arts education.
Mark
My second wife has a degree in History from University of Chicago. She has a Masters in History with a specialization in the American Civil War.
She does IT support at a University in NC.
That history degree did lots.