Liberal Arts Advantage

LIBERAL ARTS: PREP SCHOOL FOR LIFE

––Don’t view the value of a liberal arts college education solely through an economic lens. This professor has the stats to support that idea.

by Ed McKinley

Richard Detweiler give talks to spread the word on the value of a liberal arts education.

It’s not so much what you study but how you study it that leads to financial success and personal fulfillment. That’s one of the big ––ideas that emerged from a study of 1,000 college graduates ages 25 to 65 for the book The Evidence Liberal Arts Needs: Lives of Consequence, Inquiry, and Accomplishment.

Students who go on to prosper economically, contribute to society and realize their dreams are often shaped by what author Richard Detweiler calls an “authentic” community. It’s a group of college students and faculty who interact not only in the classroom or lecture hall but also on a personal level.

“People are really connected with one another, and faculty know individual students by their first names,” Detweiler told Luckbox in a description of such communities. “Students talk with faculty outside of class time—not just about academic matters but about the rest of their life.”

Besides benefitting from mentoring relationships 32%-39% with instructors, students are involved with peers who OF COLLEGE GRADS HAVE BETTER LIVES AND HIGHER INCOME BECAUSE OF AN “AUTHENTIC COMMUNITY” introduce them to unfamiliar perspectives. “They learn to work together with people of all kinds,” he said. The enviable results of those 59% interconnections are quantifiable and are documented by OF COLLEGE GRADS FARE BETTER IN LIFE IF THEY STUDY BROADLY, NOT NARROWLY Detweiler’s research, he maintained. Interviews with grads of all ages indicated students who experience the kind of community he outlines are 32% –The Evidence Liberal Arts Needs: to 39% more likely to achieve

Lives of Consequence, Inquiry, financial success, ascend to and Accomplishment by Richard A. Detweiler powerful positions and lead their communities—compared with those who don’t enjoy the advantages of a tight-knit academic community. Students can seek out these enclaves of mutual benefit at large institutions, but they’re more likely to stumble upon them at small liberal arts schools designed to foster them, Detweiler said. Majors are minor Besides demonstrating the importance of community, Detweiler’s research indicates that what a student studies doesn’t dictate success or failure in life. What’s important, the study shows, is studying broadly

instead of narrowly.

“Those people who took more than half of their courses outside of their major,” he said, “were 59% more likely to report living a fulfilled life than were those who had a very narrow focus in their educational experience.”

Viewed solely from a financial perspective, students who take more than 50% of their courses outside their field of concentration increase the probability of a higher income by 24% across all years, according to the study, Detweiler said. Grads who study broadly earn even more with the passage of time, their income increasing by 39% in their later working years.

Students can choose taking a wide approach to study at large universities in nearly any curriculum, but liberal arts majors at smaller schools are more often encouraged to take a wide variety of courses, Detweiler maintained.

The common good

It’s seemingly conventional wisdom these days that college should prepare students for a useful, successful and probably lucrative career. Detweiler and other advocates for liberal arts education realize the value of a good job. But they don’t believe that students should pursue an education solely for their own benefit. They should seek a life that benefits society, too.

“A liberal arts education is always focused on the common good,” Detweiler said. “That’s different than some forms of education, which say our purpose is to technically educate you so that you can be a good widget maker or a person good at analyzing numbers.”

But a liberal arts education, which includes majors like history, psychology, philosophy, linguistics and literature (in order of descending popularity), won’t attract many students if only a few people recognize its value.

That’s why Detweiler set off on a journey to compile data that would prove the worth of studying the liberal arts.

The proof

Interviewers spoke with more than a 1,000 college graduates by phone, asking up to 50 questions in conversations that ranged from 40 minutes to an hour and 15 minutes. They chose interviewees of different ages to gauge how a liberal arts education carries over into various stages of life.

“The question really was what educational experiences increase the probability that a person will have various kinds of life outcomes, like success or leadership,” Detweiler said.

A Fortuitous Choice of Schools

Even though his father studied engineering—one of academia’s most practical majors—Richard Detweiler chose to attend a San Diego college because it had its own truly spectacular beach. It just happened by accident that the school was a liberal arts college that set him on his life’s path.

His alma mater, California Western University, has since been absorbed into another institution, but Detweiler has carried on its tradition of liberal arts education. After earning a doctorate in social and intercultural psychology at Princeton University, he became a professor and vice president at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, and then a professor and president at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York.

From there, he continued to devote himself to the liberal arts tradition as a distinguished fellow and interim president at the Council on Library and Information Resources. These days, he serves as president emeritus of the Great Lakes Colleges Association and the Global Liberal Arts Alliance, while working as managing director of HigherEdImpact, a consulting firm.

lihood, Detweiler said. Viewed as an investment, an increase of 40% in the probability of success is significant, he noted.

Plus, the effect of community and courses outside a major field of study had more impact on the lives of students who came from lower socioeconomic backgrounds than for those who came from more fortu-

Choosing a major and what college to attend are the most important financial deci- Education isn’t solely O sions most people will ever make.for economic gain. O It should benefit society, too.

nate circumstances.

“All of these effects were tested statistically,” Detweiler said, “so all of them are statistically significant.”

But despite the proven value of a liberal arts education and the strong statistics that attest to its utility, the public hasn’t caught onto the story.

Solving the mystery

All of the interviewees had graduated from college, but some had attended large universities instead of smaller liberal arts schools. Some had experienced the “authentic community” and the liberal arts to a great degree and some had not.

Detweiler identified six “outcomes” to explore in the phone conversations with interviewees. The list included leadership, altruism, continued learning, cultural involvement, living a fulfilled life and personal success. The latter category addresses jobs and income.

A supportive academic community and a broad field of study don’t guarantee a graduate will achieve any of those desirable outcomes, but they do increase the like“The liberal arts is a vastly misunderstood and confused idea,” Detweiler said, adding that students, parents, politicians and even educators don’t really grasp it. Thus, they talk about it in different ways, using different terms to express different ideas. “Some end up thinking it’s just studying impractical things.” That prompted Detweiler to devote his professional life to defining and defending a tradition that’s been thousands of years in the making. His purpose has been to maximize the impact of liberal arts education. It’s designed to prepare students for a lifetime of A LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION learning in a society that’s OFFERS AN EXPANSIVE INTELLECTUAL GROUNDING constantly changing and offering up opportunities that have never before existed. It IN ALL KINDS OF aims to help students under-

HUMANISTIC INQUIRY. BY stand the full range of human

EXPLORING ISSUES, IDEAS knowledge and grasp the AND METHODS ACROSS THE HUMANITIES AND THE ARTS, AND THE NATURAL AND strong relationship among areas of study. Students aren’t just empty vessels to fill with knowlSOCIAL SCIENCES, YOU WILL edge, Detweiler insists. LEARN TO READ CRITICALLY, They’re capable of develop-

WRITE COGENTLY AND ing broad perspectives and THINK BROADLY. understanding the different ways people view life, values –Princeton University website and priorities.