CAMPUS

“Liberal Arts”: A Whole New Meaning

Those of us soon to graduate are probably thinking more about job applications, polishing off the last of our senior theses, caps and gowns, or graduate school than we are about continuing to engage academia after we’ve moved the tassel and/or thrown our caps in the air. However, the battle with the liberal establishment doesn’t end after we leave college behind.

According to this article in Forbes Magazine, university governance is one of the most authoritarian areas of colleges today. Many times, such as at Harvard, these governing bodies are unelected and/or have little to no contact with either current students or alumni. And yet they make many of the decisions surrounding a college’s daily life. These bodies exist in something of a vacuum, able to make policies without feeling the effects themselves.

Those of us who care about the true spirit of a liberal arts education should make an effort to discover our college’s guidelines for how alumni can influence school policy. We need to demand that the university return to a broad base of liberal arts rather than simply warehousing students for four years and spitting them out job-trained, perhaps, but still unsure as to which country America fought in the Revolution. Because college is not about trying to find a job (although it is just about necessary to finding a job these days) or obtaining a set of skills. College is about expanding your mind and refining your worldview so that you can be a competent citizen. If we lose our ability to be competent citizens, we will surely lose our country as well.