What Can I Do with My Liberal Arts Major?: Liberal Arts Education and Curricular Transformations in America

Abstract

As the above comments on humanities major are so common among liberal arts students, those students yearn for some satisfactory answers to the question, ''What can I do with my liberal arts major?" Met with the pressure of "vocationalism" among students, liberal arts faculty members often remain defensive ("no need to worry about careers"), resistant ("it's not my job"), or indifferent ("let's talk about it some other time"). Within the swirl between the claim of the traditional merits of liberal arts education and the social pressure to keep up with the times, many scholars tried to prove that liberal education prepares a person for employment in a way that transcends the titles of courses: "Students trained in the liberal arts are better able to formulate valid concepts, analyze arguments, define themselves, and orient themselves maturely to the world." (A New Case for Liberal Arts) On the other hand, many liberal arts colleges began to offer a more vocational curriculum to attract the new career-minded students. Liberal arts graduates, however, fear that they are destined to become second-class citizens in the job market. As a result, "What can I do with my liberal arts major?" persists to be their main concern.