At Harvard, the liberal arts philosophy of providing students with a broad and comprehensive education is believed to be the best model for shaping students into well-rounded, well-prepared, and conscientious citizens. This model is upheld by many other universities across the nation, often to the exclusion of more narrowly tailored pre-professional degrees. Meanwhile, the term “liberal arts” continues to be associated with elite education and white-collar professions, while “pre-professional” carries connotations of a more technical career path that is less intellectually demanding.
In a time when unemployment rates remain low while college tuition rates are increasing, students face pressure to be practical in the choices they make about their education. The continued prevalence of liberal arts majors is hard to understand when faced with the fact that pre-professional majors seem to offer higher job security. However, part of the explanation for the esteem of a liberal arts degree can be found in its long-term benefits, and in the politics of language that help make these possible.
The Disparity Between Perception and Reality
Graduate schools and employers continue to see value in the liberal arts. Martha Minow, Dean of Harvard Law School, told the HPR, “We are not interested in people studying law before they go to law school… Liberal arts is a great preparation for law school because it develops critical thinking, close reading of texts, analysis of contexts, learning to pick problems apart and put them together, analyze arguments, develop arguments on competing sides, analyze data, assess forces—those are the kinds of background that is very relevant to law.” Both graduate schools and employers claim to look for skills as opposed to knowledge. Robin Mount, director of Harvard’s Office of Career Services, explained to the HPR that many employers prefer to hire people who come in with a clean slate but have “learned how to learn” to optimize the ease with which they can be adjusted to the demands of that position.
Meanwhile, this support for the liberal arts seems to be undermined by the superior job security offered by pre-professional majors. As a study by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce shows, “Majors such as Healthcare, Education and those related to technical occupations tend to have lower unemployment rates than more general majors, like Humanities and Liberal Arts, where graduates are broadly dispersed across occupations and industries.” George Briggs, chair of the biology department at SUNY Geneseo, justified the school’s pre-professional programs by explaining that, “There’s been a big shift over the last 15 years…Clearly the students now are much more focused on ‘OK, what kind of career can I have after undergraduate school and what might help me get into that career.’”
Long-Term Benefits
The persistence of liberal arts degrees in a generation focused on practicality can be explained in part by their long-term payoff. A recent study by the Association of American Colleges and Universities suggests that a liberal arts education is best at preparing students for long-term professional success. According to the study, “At peak earnings ages (56-60 years) workers who majored as undergraduates in the humanities or social sciences earn annually on average about $2000 more than those who majored as undergraduates in professional or pre-professional fields.” While a liberal arts degree might not channel students directly into a guaranteed career post-graduation, it sets them up with a broadly applicable skill set that may help them more in the long-run than the more narrowly-focused one students gain from pre-professional programs.
Furthermore, Mount pointed out that a liberal arts degree is advantageous also in that it can lead to many different careers, and remains relevant throughout changes in the job market. On the other hand, a pre-professional major runs the risk of becoming obsolete when that specific profession alters to keep up with the times. This suggests that liberal arts’ degrees broad focus may work against them when it comes to securing jobs immediately, but may in fact be an advantage in terms of seeking employment in the long run.
Blurred Lines
It can be difficult to directly compare and contrast liberal arts programs with pre-professional majors because the two are not clearly defined, and are often misunderstood. Anthony P. Carnevale, director of the aforementioned Georgetown center, posits that the term “pre-professional” is actually broad vocabulary that applies to the majority of majors. He explained to the HPR, “There’s a belief among people at a street level that a huge chunk of college is liberal arts and humanities, when in fact it’s a very small piece. In actuality, 26% of degrees are STEM, which are occupational, 25% are business, 9% are education—that’s 60%, so at least 60% are pre-professional.”
Furthermore, the blurred lines between pre-professional and liberal arts majors are reinforced by the fact that many schools with pre-professional programs continue to support aspects of the liberal arts. For example, Briggs, in spite of defending many of SUNY Geneseo’s majors as “pre-professional,” still showed an effort to present the school’s overarching mission as providing students with a broad education: “It really isn’t in conflict with a liberal arts program, because, for instance, to major in biology you have to take 65 hours of biology out of your 120, and X number of general education credits—but what these students do is compress 4 years into 3. They’re actually taking less biology in the time they’re here.” According to Briggs, even students who know exactly what they want to do when they graduate are encouraged to expand their range while at SUNY Geneseo. Pre-professional programs are actually not always purely tailored to preparing students for their chosen profession, further distorting the distinctions between liberal arts and pre-professional degrees.
Politicized Language
Part of the public’s misunderstanding of what a pre-professional degree truly entails lies in cultural biases. Carnevale told the HPR, “The way that term is used is blue collar, or female clerical, or stuff that is not quite up to snuff for a college degree. So there is a cultural bias here that really drives this narrative, because people generally think of blue-collar professions…I think this is a term that comes from the upper middle class mindset that is largely irrelevant to the facts. When you say pre-professional, people are thinking of job training, or vocational training. But, in actuality, that’s 60% of the BAs.”
Part of the explanation for the respect accorded to liberal arts degrees lies in the politicization of language. The connotations of the term “pre-professional” lead people to imagine that these degrees limit students to blue-collar jobs, while liberal arts degrees suggest an expanded range of top-tier professions. This misunderstanding may help to explain the respect that continues to be accorded to the liberal arts, and the hesitation demonstrated by Briggs in using the loaded term “pre-professional.”
While the comparative advantages and disadvantages of pre-professional and liberal arts degrees continue to be debated, the two may not be as diametrically opposed to one another as they are often portrayed. There is room for overlap between these degrees, which exist side-by-side at schools like SUNY Geneseo. The mixing of pre-professional elements in a liberal arts education, and vice versa, allows students to take advantage of the benefits of each without having to cope with the drawbacks of either. However, in order for universities to reconcile these two approaches and maximize students’ college experiences, the cultural biases against the term “pre-professional” must be acknowledged and addressed.