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Liberal arts are a wide range of disciplines that attract millions of students worldwide. Despite being a popular choice for students each year, many people regard the area as unnecessary, useless, and low-paying. George Anders wrote an article titled The Unexpected Value of the Liberal Arts that attempts to eliminate the topics misconceptions. It draws attention to the field of arts that people have conflicting views about. This essay will focus on the authors main points, opinions, personal impressions, new information, and questions regarding the given information.
Main Points
The article aims to address the misconception of liberal arts education being useless and elitist and reshaping the idea surrounding the concept. The author highlights that liberal arts education has been regarded as a degree that should be attained only by people of generational wealth and experience since ancient Rome. However, Anders (2017) states that this belief is no longer true since people with a liberal arts degree can pursue complex, interesting, and engaging career roles regardless of socioeconomic status. The author gives an example of Mai-Ling Garcia, who had the opportunity to attain a sociology degree in Berkeley, California, which later allowed her to occupy high-standing positions in both governmental and corporate organizations. Anders (2017) argues that unlike vocational occupations such as an engineer or a doctor, liberal arts career allows one to have a broader scope of opportunities to make a societal change. Thus, the articles main point is to showcase that liberal arts education enables people to pursue jobs of a drastically varying spectrum and to impact the environment regardless of ones background.
The Opinion of the Author
I believe that the authors opinion is relatively unique since not many people regard liberal arts degrees as worthy of pursuing unless one already has experience or connections in the chosen field. For instance, many people who major in Communication degrees say that their education is about everything and nothing simultaneously. However, Anders (2017) refers to this feature of liberal arts education as a positive one rather than a downside. I believe that the authors statements are factual since many people with liberal arts education become social activists, entrepreneurs, and civil servants with a broader vision compared to peers of other vocational backgrounds. As Anders (2017) showcased, a person with a sociology degree can pursue careers in governmental, corporate, and digital fields since their expertise is unique. Thus, I agree with the author and think that his opinion should be more popularized among college applicants to encourage them to pursue social sciences degree.
Personal Reflection
The central point that I agree and disagree with is the authors opinion about the success that liberal arts graduates can achieve by utilizing their unique vision in unusual environments. I agree that the liberal arts degree can generate an abundance of knowledge and shape a valuable outlook that many employers would look for. Furthermore, this type of education allows one to easily transcend their expertise to other disciplines that are not typically thought of as liberal, such as an example of philosophy majors engaging in business. However, the author frames the narrative in a way that makes it seem easily achievable. I do not entirely agree that any liberal arts graduate can achieve great opportunities in life since, as it is apparent from the examples given by Anders (2017), one has to have a significant motivation. If a social sciences student lacks the vision of their future goals, they will go through their student life aimlessly and, upon graduation, will pursue low-paying positions of their field instead of diversifying their skill set.
Three New Pieces of Information
The history of the elitism of liberal arts, the statistic about the experience of graduates, and the new trend of first-generation college applicants were the three new pieces of information in the article. Firstly, the fact that liberal arts was regarded as a privileged field of studies in ancient Rome was a new fact for me. Since today people feel free to decide the directions of their studies, the diverse and multidimensional student body of modern campuses made this finding surprising. Secondly, Anders (2017) highlighted that around 40 percent of people attending social sciences classes are students who are the first to start college among their families. This evidence inspires me since the aforementioned elitisms is being minimized in favor of equal opportunities for all. Thirdly, the author mentions that first-generation college graduates receive lower salaries upon graduation than those whose parents also have a degree. This finding is new and somewhat disappointing since, as more people enter the liberal arts fields, this trend is most likely to grow if no support will be given to recent graduates. Therefore, they will face the inequality of education and workforce discrimination.
Three Questions
While the article was informational and gave readers new and unique ideas about liberal arts education, some questions remain. For instance, while the focus on workplace inequality in relation to the newly graduated liberal art students is a shocking fact, the author did not follow up with a factual statistical data on mid-career stages. This incoherency poses a natural question of what is the liberal art graduates mid-career pay? The answer to this question would put the authors arguments in perspective and make him more credible and logical in his narrative.
Furthermore, while the author mentions the success stories of Mai-Ling Garcia and Dyllan Brown-Bramble as exemplary cases, I would like to see more concrete statistics for the argument to be believable. Basing the rationale on two successful graduates makes the audience wonder whether the evidence of Mai-Ling Garcias story is a single success case or a tendency. Lastly, one of the questions that might arise is, What kind of qualities does one need to become a well-paid and sought-after liberal arts professional? This question is directly related to the case that the author provides. As apparent from the article, liberal arts expertise has to be supplemented by other interpersonal competencies to achieve success in unrelated fields.
Reference
Anders, G. (2017). The unexpected value of the liberal arts. The Atlantic. Web.
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