Liberal Arts Education Essay
Liberal arts education, or academic courses that are intended to gain wide variety of knowledge including humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, is in the difficult times. Some criticize it due to its expensive tuition and contents of education. These critics have often referred to liberal arts as “luxury for the rich” or “impractical academic disciplines” (Pascarella et al. 6). Nevertheless, liberal arts education seems to be better when compared to professional education in terms of allowing students to learn broadly, to acquire critical thinking skills, and to establish verbal skills. First of all, in the liberal arts education, students are capable of acquiring comprehensive knowledge. For example, students can major in philosophy …show more content…
In fact, because of the internet and social networking system, many people nowadays live in a world where an enormous amount of information are being exchanged. Therefore, each individual has the responsibility to evaluate the information carefully. In other words, critical thinking abilities seem to becoming important even in daily life. According to a survey conducted by Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), 93% of the employers answered that they expect their job candidates to have the abilities to think critically (Liberal Arts 2). This data suggest that having critical thinking abilities will be valued as useful not only in college but also in society. For example, since critical thinking is a way of questioning or challenging social assumptions, one can make a difference in politics by carefully observing each candidate’s election pledge. Even Albert Einstein, a German theoretical physicist who won Nobel Prize, once said that the essential point of liberal arts education is not that students have opportunities to learn countless facts from textbooks, but that they have chances to cultivate critical thinking abilities that textbooks can not teach (“Liberal Arts”). Liberal arts education prepares students to become independent and outstanding citizens who can critically think social decisions and make
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