What Will a Liberal Arts Education Look Like in 50 Years?

[@hardcoreemomusicgurl]

"take risks" With that liberal arts major, well, I am INDEED taking risks. I am no longer linear, professor.

[@EuropeYear1917]

+In King We Trust Amen to that! I dropped $40,000 in loans on a liberal arts degree at a private school, and all I can find work wise is the same crap I'd be doing if I'd never gone to college in the first place with a lot of debt. These profs have no clue, because their path was linear Undergrad to Masters to Doctorate to Teaching College. Life is never linear in the Liberal Arts unless you plan to teach school or college. My path was to do what I love in school and hope I don't bite the proverbial bullet (which it appears that I have).

[@leocaptured]

@@EuropeYear1917 Hey man, I would be interested to know how things went for you from 3 years ago. Are you a little more optimistic now? Cheers!

[@jthweatt412]

Does anyone get the feeling they are just speaking in loops? Maybe I just wasn't paying close enough attention, but I didn't hear one coherent idea about where lib arts would be in 50 years. Some Quotes: "I think that you can't outsource human connection. I hope you can't" *What the fuck does that even mean?* "The fundamental idea of liberal arts, that was developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, has been able to keep adjusting while keeping a kind of sense of its fundamental purposes and objectives are." *I have no idea what ideas you are referencing or how they are 'adjusting'. This statement is so formless and vapid that I can't even disagree with it.* "I think in the future, the notion of education stopping when you leave school will be ridiculous" *Yes, because it already is ridiculous. You don't need special insight to say that, and you still haven't made any comment on liberal arts in education* "I believe the changes in technology will continue to change the nature of our economy, the nature of our everyday lives, the nature of our leisure activities" *You don't fucking say? Who woulda guessed that in the future things would BE DIFFERENT* "It'll be different? How different? I'm a historian. I use the past to try to think about the future, but I'm very reluctant to try to predict it." *Supposedly has thoughts about the future, but goddamned if he is telling you them*

[@seinfan9]

This, my friend, is how they teach to write and speak in the liberal arts. It's faux intellect. If you can stomach it, just read any propaganda article from the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN etc. They ALL read in the same manner. A bunch of vacuous fluff that is intended to obfuscate the fact that they have no idea what they're talking about.

[@Lost_In_LA]

The video is not the greatest collection of quotes on the subject. Actually, it is poor. The original liberal arts referred to seven areas of study-three in the language arts called the trivium and four in STEM called the quadrivium. Becoming fluent in both realms of human knowledge provided the skills necessary to be a free thinking individual. It is possible for a person to attend a liberal arts college and not get a liberal arts education, but that is a waste. Such a person would be better off attending a technical institute or going to a European institution. For those that are game, take a class in a challenging subject outside of your major. Stretch yourself. You may never get direct access to masters in their craft ever again. Also, consider double majoring-one major to satisfy the trivium and the other for the quadrivium-you will be better off for it in the long run.

[@saurav3047]

Well that is liberal arts for you, it all sounds intelligent but when you read between the lines, its common sense

[@ruzzelladrian907]

Liberal Arts would be useful... if it's free.

[@charlottejohnson5340]

It will certainly be interesting to see how education evolves!

[@NewLife-qj5lp]

The times where you can do "whatever you want" are long over, no matter what colleges (which are for profit businesses) tell you

[@Lost_In_LA]

A liberal arts curriculum is what makes American higher education distinctive. Students are challenged to take courses outside of their primary interest. In practical terms, it adds a year of distribution requirements on top of the major course of study compared to the European system, but it is this aspect that allows students to experiment, develop some well rounded skills, and defer declaration of major. Socially, it is also a chance to study with classmates that have a completely different talent stack and way of thinking.

[@janey2562]

I' m shock of the way some of these professors think. OMG.

[@FOHguy]

My favorite bumper sticker ever. " I have a Liberal Arts degree. Do you want fries with that?"

[@johnappleseed8146]

Michael H Fogg People with liberal arts degrees work in finance and law.. not Burger King

[@miacisewski6945]

Eek. I really want to be an attorney (where liberal arts may be more important due to the emphasis of writing in law), but I am not great at math. I want to do economics/business/political science/IR. However, this video makes me fearful.

[@androasatashvili3363]

Econ is fine, just make sure to take the math bull by the horns

[@miacisewski6945]

@@androasatashvili3363 Definitely. Econ is definitely a good degree, because it transfers well into other industries. I have heard that political science and IR have better outcomes than other liberal arts majors.

[@dankosalihbasic6267]

Comment section is full of philosophers. There is Plato Aristotel Socrates Pythagoras Diogenes Hippocrates ! EVERYONE IS IN COMMENT SECTION!

[@pprkt0]

Danko Salihbasic haha true

[@daheikkinen]

Heraclitus has entered the chat

[@nortonnorth1371]

There was not a single comment from faculty teaching at a traditional liberal arts institution in this video segment. If you have a liberal arts degree, you'd notice that and wonder why.

[@drspastic]

theres probably a course in it.

[@TyroneJemielWashington]

Who's the smug professor with the glasses who closes his eyes every time he talks?

[@almaliciapg]

...I think he has some sort of issue with his eyes.

Education will become more specialized in the future. You should be tested when you are 12 to see what you should do.

[@user-yr3uj6go8i]

For most people, their interests will inevitably change over time. Self-education will possibly grow even larger in the future if the ridiculous inflated college costs make it even more unaffordable in the future.

[@user-yr3uj6go8i]

+GamingTV Quite frankly, I completely agree with you. The only main reason why most students go to college/university in the first place is to earn that fancy piece of paper just to be qualified for most jobs that most, if not almost all, employers require you to have it. I much rather prefer self-education than schooling since the schooling system is incredibly flawed, especially the grading system that punishes you for making mistakes which is the essence of actual learning. It's also completely free and less time-consuming. I always extremely highly recommend other KZbin commenters to only go to college/university if they're choosing a major that either has extremely high in demand, cannot be easily self-taught with only free books and internet at the local library without the college/university professors, or/and is linked to careers which employees cannot make any mistakes whatsoever such as engineering, medicine, etc. I'm actually already working to self-teach myself five languages before I graduate from high school.

[@Laz3rCat95]

@@user-yr3uj6go8i I think that grading has value as there needs to be a way to demonstrate that students have learned something but I agree that it can be done differently. Perhaps instead of lowering a student's grade each time they make a mistake teachers should evaluate students' progress on the whole to determine whether they pass. Like if they make significantly less mistakes than when they started by the end and thereby demonstrate their competence in the area at the end of the course, they can pass even if they made a lot of mistakes at the beginning.

[@drspastic]

like russia and china. stream out the prodigies from the labour class and give them all the education they can adsorb.

[@kellensarien9039]

This video was posted in 2014, when wokeness was entering liberal arts education big time. It was the year language like "microaggression" and "check your privilege" and "safe spaces" entered classrooms. That was the end of liberal arts education, right there. Fast forward five years . . . the liberal arts (and some of the so-called social "sciences") are now proving grounds for purity and right-thinking, for advocacy and victim solidarity, not thought and inquiry. You major in liberal arts if you want to ban speakers you disagree with from campus, if you see "colonialism" and "structural racism" and "sexualized violence" every where you look, if cancel culture is your nirvana. The tuition liberal arts students pay their institution is welfare for obnoxious busybodies. Do not major in liberal arts. Science, math, engineering, business, economics . . . these are the only things worth studying today in a university.

[@joesmeeth4459]

50 Years from now, we'll have Liberal Arts majors mowing our lawns, flipping burgers, and washing cars for those who got a real degree.

[@cineva3044]

You are narrow minded!

[@danie7kovacs]

You wish! You can flush your 'real degree' down the toilet in 50 years. No one will need workers who's specialty is that once they have memorized stuff. These jobs will be for the robots. The creativity and humanities will never be replaced tho.

[@danie7kovacs]

So, robots flipping burgers, Liberal Art graduates do everything else... while you don't have a job.

[@cristoferjimenez8126]

True

[@infamouscrusader3363]

Amen.

[@danielduckington5789]

I hope 50 years from now, people throw gender studies or black history degree into the dustbin of history but I believe that is wishful thinking

[@Lost_In_LA]

The solution to gender or ethnic studies is to make the degree tremendously more difficult to obtain. It's not the theme of their humanity studies, but the lack of rigor and serious study most people doubt.

[@davidpetrusewicz7729]

Worried ------------------ no student no money. Keep student coming. For these teacher $$$$$$ Don't worried. It's only a matter of time before some one will make a UTUBE video no how to get you liberal arts degree for free

[@TangomanX2008]

We have been watering down liberal arts education for some time now. Lets face it, when Greek, then Latin were dropped as requirements, that watered things down. We've had a steady generation of new an useless liberal arts being discovered and replace more essential and challenging ones. Courses get watered down, and grade inflation goes up. And now, there is a phenomena in secondary education that will eventually hit college level education where a computer programming language meets the foreign language requirement.

[@drspastic]

would the ability to write efficient opcode be more valuable than languages that effectively died out hundreds of years ago?

[@Lost_In_LA]

@@drspastic Not for a business analyst or a product manager. Also, someone that has mastered Latin or Greek has demonstrated an impressive talent and discipline.

[@Lost_In_LA]

Bravo. Collages are a business. Watering down curriculums allows colleges to accommodate students who otherwise are not up to par. The humanities in particular has become weakened and corrupt. The math requirements in STEM probably made it a poor option to shelter unqualified students. The result is students that barely graduate and lack skills for further education but hopefully had a chance to enjoy the four years and find themselves. But the original idea of the liberal arts is still valuable. And the student who can take true advantage of it will be immensely more powerful as a result.