Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin recently belittled liberal arts education, claiming that public schools are not turning out degrees of the “things people want.”
“There are thousands of examples of successful business executives, entrepreneurs and professionals who majored in languages, literature, arts or history,” rebutted a recent Courier-Journal editorial. “College studies can provide the technical foundation for very specific careers, but they also can inspire a broader view of one’s self and the world around us that can translate into a different kind of success, as well as leadership and civic responsibility.”
In fact, evidence abounds that the workforce of the 21st Century marketplace more than ever demands a well-rounded higher education.
“It’s not an ‘either/or’ scenario, it’s a ‘both/and’ way to undo the damage that separating (and thus putting into hierarchy) the sciences and humanities has done to inquiry and innovation. ‘Eureka’ moments rarely happen without some kind of cross-fertilization from other ways of thinking about a problem,” notes one poster commenting on this interesting article on the subject in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
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