BEST COLLEGE MAJOR LINKS RELEVANT TO SELECTING A LIBERAL ARTS MAJOR

Rivier College (Nashua, NH) gives many questions one should ask before CHOOSING A MAJOR. This article is geared to someone considering a liberal arts major.

Dr. David Brownlee, Professor of History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania gives his experiences ON CHOOSING A MAJOR and attempts to allay some of the readers concerns about the value of a liberal arts education,

BEST COLLEGE MAJOR SOME NEWSPAPER ARTICLES PRAISING THE LIBERAL ARTS MAJORS

USA Today (July 24, 2001) says that OFFBEAT MAJORS    (Liberal Arts Majors) help CEOs think Outside the Box. Examples of this are given.

BEST COLLEGE MAJOR LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION AND JOB PLACEMENT

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A LIBERAL ARTS    EDUCATION AND A TECHNICAL EDUCATION    An understanding of major begins with an understanding of the    difference in education one receives from a liberal arts school and    a technical, professional school. The basic distinction is theoretical    versus applied. A liberal arts college or university offers theoretical    understanding of academic fields of study. The purpose of this    education is to provide a broad, general education and the further    development of basic, transferable skills which can be applied to a    wide variety of career fields. Technical and professional colleges    and the special schools of large universities teach students how to    apply the theory. The purpose of this education is to provide    specialized training and specific skills for a particular occupation or    career field.              COLLEGE OF CHARLESTOWN Career Services

SOME COMMENTS ON CRITICAL THINKING AND    A LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION          You must set aside any narrow minded assumptions about the    purpose of a liberal arts education. The biggest thing that you    must set aside is a simplistic notion that a college education is    about creating a "linear thinker" - in other words, that your    education is only about gathering and memorizing information    and learning the exact formulae and methods for a specific job    upon graduation. Such an education merely programs you for    one set of tasks and does not train your mind to process and    analyze information, to "think outside the box" in order to find    solutions or understand problems which may arise in the future.     Lemmings, the animals who are infamous for stampeding en    masse off cliffs, are excellent linear thinkers. They do as they    have always done. They do not pause to question, consider,    and debate the merits and rationality of their actions (for the    love of St. Columba, they don't even consider the merits of    using bungee cords!). An education in the liberal arts (among    which history is a specific discipline) is about developing and    honing critical thinking skills; the skills which give you the ability    to weigh the validity of different points of view, question them,    understand from where different points come, and, in the end,    arrive at a reasoned conclusion about these points of view. What    do they hold in common? How are they different? As you take    more and more upper level classes in your major, you will find     that the emphasis on considering evidence rather than just    gathering it, increases. You will learn to question your    assumptions and traditional beliefs about society and human    nature so that you can attain a more complete understanding of    why you held these beliefs in the first place and whether it is    worth holding onto them in the future.            Department of History, IONA COLLEGE (New Rochelle, NY)

THE PURPOSE OF A LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION  It is a mistake to think of an undergraduate degree in a college  of liberal arts   and sciences as a matter of being trained for a specific job or profession. This is just as much true of the sciences as it is of the liberal arts. The main aim of a degree in the  liberal arts or in the basic sciences is the acquisition of a certain  body of knowledge and the acquisition of the skills needed to extend your knowledge on your own. Many people are apt to think of going |to college or the university as a matter of job preparation.   In some sense it is. College graduates earn substantially more over their lifetimes than people who have completed only a high school  degree. But this is not because going to college prepares you for  some specific high paying job. If that were its purpose, it would be much less valuable than it is. The benefits to your earning power are really incidental to the main purpose of a degree,  which is to provide you with a broad education in central disciplines of study in advanced learning (that's the general education part) and with a more specialized training in a  particular area (that's the major part). The value of a  university education lies in the prospect it opens up on the pleasures of the life of the mind, the breadth of vision it  encourages, the knowledge it provides of the most important developments in our collective understanding of the world,  and the sense of what is possible through sustained intellectual study of a particular subject. But it is not an accident, of course, that people with college degrees earn   more over a lifetime than people without. The skills you learn in the serious study of any academic subject turn out to be quite generally applicable, and put you in a position to do things which someone who has not had that training is not in a position to do. These are primarily skills in identifying, analyzing and solving problems, skills in handling quantitative data, skills in written and verbal   communication, and the ability to engage in the kind of disciplined and sustained intellectual application that is  required of you for academic success. These skills turn out to be invaluable later on, and prepare one for a wide range of jobs and professions and careers.       So ... while the main aim of a liberal arts degree is not to get you a job (it's more valuable than that), nonetheless, pursuing an academic degree seriously will give you a lot of skills which will make you a valuable employee, and moreover give you the skills that will be valuable not just in one or another specific job or enterprise, but for an almost open-ended number of careers.       It is also important to keep in mind that while your degree will give you important general intellectual skills, it will certainly not give you all the skills you need for any  specific job you undertake. In any job, entrepreneurial undertaking, or profession, you will have to undertake some further training and learn additional skills. This  usually takes place on the job. This turns out to be true even for those majors in colleges which think of themselves as primarily professional, such as the Business  college and the Engineering college. If you think about it, this is what you would expect. Unless you are entering a craft profession (and even then to some extent), you will find that in any challenging job you will have to be constantly learning new things and acquiring new skills as the kinds of tasks you have to complete and the challenges you face change. One reason why the skills you acquire now turn out to be so valuable is that they prepare you for what you will find is the almost constant need to learn more and to acquire new skills, or to apply old skills to novel problems and tasks.      To put it most generally, then, an undergraduate degree provides you with quite generally applicable intellectual skills, and provides you with the ability to learn the particular skills you will need to know for your first job, and for whatever  subsequent jobs  or careers you may pursue.                 CAREER HANDBOOK FOR PHILOSOPHY MAJORS                (University of Florida)