Critical Thinking and the Liberal Arts

Liberal arts colleges seem an endangered species as curricula shift toward science, technology, engineering, and math -- the STEM disciplines. But liberal arts ideal still has its eloquent defenders, and there is evidence that good jobs go to liberal arts graduates -- eventually. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, degrees in the humanities, in proportion to all bachelor's degrees, declined just 0.1% from 1980 to 2010, from 17.1% to 17.0%. The STEM disciplines are obviously important to economic productivity, but so is the entire rainbow of human knowledge and the ability to think critically. That's why nations around the world are beginning to embrace the liberal arts idea that American education has done so much to promote, even as people question it. They need skilled thinkers, problem solvers, team workers, and communicators, and not just in the business, scientific, and technology sectors. The liberal arts embody precisely the skills a democracy must cultivate to maintain its vital reservoir of active, thoughtful, humane, and productive citizens.