The Liberal Arts: An Examination

Editor's Note: This is the first installment in a series that will examine the liberal arts system at Boston College.

Through a broad core curriculum, liberal arts institutions across the country, including Boston College, expose students to a range of disciplines. Their mission is to prepare students for their future careers indirectly by teaching them how to learn, which comes with both advantages and disadvantages.

"Different disciplines teach you to think in different ways," said Mary Crane, director for the Institute for the Liberal Arts. "Your brain actually changes as you learn to think in different ways."

Rather than training a student in a particular vocational field, core curricula allow students to gain broad experience in numerous fields, which helps foster multiple skills that benefit them in the long run. "You gain a wider range of skills: analytic skills, communication skills, writing skills," Crane said. "You end up being more flexible and creative. You learn how to learn things, and can adapt if you have to learn something else."

This education changes students in many ways. "It's about the transformation of a person," said Rev. Arthur Madigan, S.J., director of the University core curriculum and professor in the philosophy department. "The moment we say, ‘liberal arts,' we're no longer talking about a set of skills. It's about shaping intelligence, judgment, and imagination of a human being."

Because a liberal arts education focuses more on how a student learns than teaching them a particular set of skills relevant to their career path, some students are concerned their job prospects may be limited. However, the skills they gain are often appealing to employers, regardless of what major they choose, said Janet Costa Bates, associate director of the Career Center. "[Employers look for] people with problem-solving skills, analytic skills, communication skills – all the things Arts and Sciences students have to develop all day. If they have people who have the ability to learn, they can teach them."

Majors are not particularly important, though it is important that students work to gain experience in their chosen field through extracurricular activities and internships. "[Employers] aren't as interested in majors as they are in experience," Bates said. "Study what you love to study, but then you have to do something to build the bridge."

As technology changes, there are always new fields opening up, and students with a liberal arts education are more ready to take on innovative careers because they have learned how to learn, Bates said. In addition, most people have eight to nine jobs, with two to three career changes over the course of their lives, and those who have been more broadly educated are better prepared to adjust to such changes. "We don't want people coming in and learning just one skill," she said. "The world is going to change, and careers are going to change, and you won't be able to adapt."

The general adaptability makes students who have been liberally educated better prepared to deal with the unknown. "If the education works, the person comes out of it curious and open to things that are unforeseen," Madigan said.

Education, however, is not all about preparation for a future vocation. "You're not just getting an education to have a career, you're getting an education to have a better life," Crane said. "It's almost like a leap of faith. It isn't necessarily to get you your first job, it's for your whole life."

Two aspects of BC make it different than an average liberal arts institution: its size and its Jesuit tradition. Because BC is larger than many liberal arts institutions and has three pre-professional schools, students can both be broadly educated and sample what a more vocational education may entail. "Our identity is founded on the belief of the transformative power of a liberal arts education," said David Quigley, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. "I think, to our advantage, our students are able to tap into a large and very impressive faculty, and while they are undergraduates they have the opportunity to experience what a professional education might be like."

Additionally, Jesuit ideals are focused on educating the whole person, which is also reflected in the core curriculum. "Our Jesuit tradition insists upon the importance of a core curriculum, and our students benefit from that broad exposure to disciplines and ways of thinking," Quigley said.

The University core requires students to take theology and explore religion in a way secular schools may not. "BC is potentially more inclusive, because at a secular university there might not be as much openness to a religious or spiritual education," Crane said.

The effect of the broad education BC provides is visible in the way students conduct their studies, Crane said. "An interesting thing to me at BC is that so many people have double majors and triple majors. I think students do understand the spirit of a liberal arts education, but I think the anger is that, to some extent, people think it's a way to have more on their transcript."

Though a liberal arts education has benefits, there are certain downsides. Because most institutions that emphasize the importance of a broad course of study are private, cost can inhibit some from attending such schools. "I think sometimes people who have less money have to think about a college degree in a more instrumental way," Crane said. "They may not have the luxury of a liberal arts degree."

The cost of such an education is justifiable, Madigan said, but that does not mean it should be inaccessible to less privileged students. "There's no denying it's hugely expensive," he said. "To be fair, not everybody pays the full freight. My concern is not that it's too expensive relative to the value, but that it may be operating in a way that excludes a lot of working-class kids."