Compare these 2 resumes — who gets hired?
Candidate A
Bachelor of Science in Information Systems, minor in Accounting
Member: Debate Society
Hobbies: Math Club, Chess Club
Candidate B
Bachelor of Arts i Womyn’s studies, minor in Social Justice
Member: ANTIFA
Hobbies: Black Lives Matter, Anti-Republican Club
Liberal Arts at many places these days just means...a place where professors and other students can tell you how terrible you are
I don’t think any intelligent or educated person would argue the value inherent in a “classical” liberal arts education. Being well-founded in classical literature, unrevised history, sociology, etc is invaluable to critical thinking and “soft” skills.
However, today’s liberal arts education is all based on political correctness and so-called social justice - which is useless in actually earning a living.
A college degree, for a goodly percentage of their students, is a waste of time and money.
“LIBERAL arts” has been a pathetic joke for decades. The “professors” mostly are LIB idiots with no sense of civility, facts, honesty, propriety or even what “humanities” is. They are children of the 60’s who couldn’t find a real job in their youth. Sadly, taxpayers pay their salaries and retirement. In private schools, taxpayers often support them through grants for their pathetic wacky, worthless and senseless “studies”. What a joke.
As someone who got a BA in history before moving on to get 2 grad degrees in more useful subjects, I’m very familiar with this.
For most liberal arts degrees there are only 2 paths. Either you teach or you go to law school which has become ever less attractive over the last 30 years.....too expensive, and too many lawyers meaning earning potential for many is lousy. So the liberal arts degree is just not very practical - and no, I wouldn’t major in that if I had it to do all over again.
The second issue is not just PC but the ideological Stalinism of the PCers. History is just current events far enough back in time that we call it history. There is no capital “T” Platonic Truth in how to interpret it. People are going to disagree just as much as they disagree about current politics. That’s all well and good so long as they can defend their opinions with facts, quotes, sources etc. a good history education would encompass learning about the same event from 2 very different perspectives. The student could take that in, do their own reading and decide where they think reality lies.
That is not how history is taught today. PC Revisionists came to really dominate Academia from the 70s-90s. Buck them......disagree with their dogma in a paper or thesis or be a grad student for a non Leftist prof, and you can forget about getting tenure or even getting hired at most universities. Academics then try to push THEIR Revisionist narrative as though it were the only way to view historical events and they immediately seek to demean anybody who disagrees. Even the work of earlier historians who were university profs now somehow doesn’t count. Needless to say, anything said by anybody outside the Academy - which they now dominate is automatically invalid. Inconvenient historical facts and quotes - even if indisputable and backed up by impeccable sources - can be dismissed.
Their goal is not to educate. It is to indoctrinate. Fortunately much of the public sees it and refuses to buy their BS - to their eternal frustration.
Nearly all universities and seminaries are now annexes of the Frankfurt School. As such, they follow leftist principles and practices:
Usurp something. Destroy it. Blame opposition.
There was a time, and a very long time, when the liberal arts provided a significant element of an education, and in some places, still do, but those classes in literature, history, philosophy, etc. evolved from teaching students how to think to what to think.