Why Do They Call It Liberal Arts Do I Become a Liberal After I Get a Degree
Why Study the Liberal Arts?
What is a Liberal Arts Education?
Working towards a baccalaureate degree in the Liberal Arts or Sciences involves taking courses in what are traditionally referred to as the "Liberal" Arts. This ways that your courses volition be in full general areas of written report--philosophy, mathematics, literature, history, economics, languages, and so on--rather than in applied or specialized fields.
A Liberal Arts teaching is not intended to railroad train yous for a specific task, though it does gear up you for the world of work by providing you with an invaluable set of employability skills, including the ability to think for yourself, the skills to communicate effectively, and the capacity for lifelong learning.
What Will I Study as Part of a Liberal Arts Education?
Y'all will study a diversity of subjects, looking at the world and its people from diverse points of view. Y'all will larn virtually ideas and beliefs that have guided human being beings and shaped civilizations for thousands of years. Yous'll ask yourself questions like:
- What does it mean to exist human?
- What have humans done, thought about, and felt?
- What is truth and beauty, and what are their value to life?
- How have we been shaped by, and how have we shaped, our physical and natural environment?
- What skills, methods or techniques can exist used to examine the world and its people?
A Liberal Arts education is by nature broad and diverse, rather than narrow and specialized. Choosing courses from many disciplines gives y'all a broad and useful education.
In the first yr, a Liberal Arts student normally takes a diverseness of introductory courses. This not only gives you a wide knowledge of subjects but helps you to choose certain areas for farther study. In virtually cases, you lot will be encouraged to take courses in at least some of the major categories within the Liberal Arts:
- Humanities (English Literature, Foreign Languages, History, Philosophy)
- Social Sciences (Black Studies, Economics, Geography, Political Science, Folklore)
- Creative Liberal Arts (Fine Art, Theatre, Spoken communication, Artistic Writing)
- Sciences (Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Math)
Liberal Arts studies at UNO likewise requires students to choose a major - a specific grouping of thematically-linked courses. Past concentrating on a given field of study, whatever it may be, you volition go beyond the mere surface of things and proceeds a solid grasp of the cadre material in a given area.
Why Should I Pursue a Liberal Arts Education?
This is the big question: Why Liberal Arts? Why not Engineering? Or Nursing? Or Computer Science? There are numerous ways to answer this question, and ultimately the utility of any reply volition depend upon your own circumstances.
For you lot, studies in the Liberal Arts may provide the necessary practical skills that y'all will apply on the job; or they may prepare you to movement on to a graduate or professional school. For others, the key value of a Liberal Arts instruction may exist the personal satisfaction and fulfillment that studying philosophy or art makes possible. Still others will be able to excel in today'south global business globe because the foreign linguistic communication skills adult in their Liberal Arts education gave them an of import edge.
Indeed, the reasons for pursuing a Liberal Arts instruction are as many as the number of potential students. What you demand to ask is what you want to get out of a postsecondary education. If you want to become a solid, broadly-based, general education which will amend your analytical, communication and learning abilities, then the Liberal Arts may be for you.
What About Skills Training?
You have probably heard a lot of talk lately about how important it is to get the proper "skills gear up" so that you can be immediately attractive to an employer. Some think that the goal of a postsecondary education should be to provide you with every bit much specific training as possible before you lot arrive on the job, thus relieving potential employers of the costs and risks associated with hiring untrained workers.
In light of this perception, many students balk at taking full general Liberal Arts courses and choose instead to focus narrowly on a vocational or professional surface area of study. This tin be an excellent choice. There are many rewarding and fulfilling careers that one can pursue with the help of a starting time-class vocational or career preparation programme. Merely make sure that you are making your educational choices for the right reasons—those that are best for you. If you are shying away from Liberal Arts courses because you think that you lot demand training in specific skills to get a chore, yous may be mistaken.
Showtime, a Liberal Arts instruction does provide you with tangible, practical skills that employers value highly. What'southward more than, you lot will obtain skills and knowledge that are never obsolete. The world is changing rapidly and at that place may exist a danger in preparing yourself too narrowly to fit a sure slot that may not even be past the time you get into the task market place. Meanwhile, the underlying skills, abilities and attributes fostered in the Liberal Arts are always relevant.
What Skills Will I Acquire by Taking Liberal Arts Courses?
The list of skills, abilities, capacities and attributes normally associated with a Liberal Arts education includes, but is not express to, the post-obit:
- Analytical and knowledge-building skills
- Evaluative and critical thinking skills
- Creative thinking skills
- Effective oral and written communication skills
- Critical and reflective reading skills
- Problem solving and pattern intelligence skills
- Numerical skills
- Synthesis skills and the ability to express the results of analysis and evaluation
- Ability to pose meaningful questions that advance understanding and knowledge
- Power to conduct research and organize textile finer
- Information literacy and other skills associated with learning how to learn
- Independent judgment and ethical controlling
- Ability to come across goals, manage time, and complete a project successfully
- Self-confidence and self-agreement
- Power to cooperate with others and work in teams
- Sensitivity to individuals and tolerance of cultural differences
- Ability to use sensitive and technical equipment
- Informed openness to new information technologies
Where Can a Liberal Arts Education Take Me?
A Liberal Arts degree prepares you lot for hundreds of careers. Your opportunities are limited only by your imagination, your interests and your willingness to devote fourth dimension and energy to your work. Of course, a Liberal Arts degree tin also have you to the acme graduate and professional schools. Liberal Arts courses are frequently required for anyone who pursues a professional person degree, and a loftier pct of Liberal Arts graduates go along to take further education. This is non surprising, since the Liberal Arts serve as a foundation for most vocational or professional studies at the academy. For case, programs in accounting, concern, education, journalism, and law are congenital upon the knowledge and skills that come from fields that make up the Liberal Arts. Accounting and business depend upon mathematics and economics; teaching derives from psychology and sociology; journalism requires a knowledge of English and history; and law builds upon political science and philosophy.
Will a Liberal Arts Instruction Make Me a Better Person?
A Liberal Arts education will raise your noesis and improve your understanding of the globe and its people. Many say that knowledge leads to wise activity, perhaps fifty-fifty to goodness. Thus, a Liberal Arts education may aid y'all to perceive and to empathize your shortcomings, allowing you lot to become a amend denizen, friend, spouse, parent, man.
Liberal Arts courses often enable students to accomplish beyond their own experiences and imagine worlds far distant in time and infinite. By opening your eyes, ears and heed, a good Liberal Arts education can strengthen in you the virtues of tolerance, sympathy, and respect for others. A Liberal Arts education will equip you lot to participate effectively in your customs. Information technology can besides assist you lot to engage in the controversies of our time--whether virtually the environment, cultural diversity, social justice, ethnic strife, gender relations or strange policy.
Can a Liberal Arts Education Make Me Happy?
It would be ridiculous to make whatever promises of a carefree futurity, but a Liberal Arts pedagogy tin can contribute to your happiness. Studies in the humanities offer an obvious preparation for leisure and life beyond the world of work. A skillful Liberal Arts didactics increases your capacity to understand and enjoy humanity's cultural and scientific achievements. It also contributes to the pleasance you can get from the globe effectually you. Studies in your Liberal Arts program can increase your awareness and appreciation of literature, music, personality, nature, art, symbolism, wit, historical allusion or figurative linguistic communication.
Simply more than that, a expert general education allows you to run across things whole, to provide a context for seemingly meaningless or isolated events. This may audio like an abstract benefit, just it is simply this orientation for knowledge that might reduce the defoliation and frustration that comes from existence unable to put into context an event, conclusion or phenomenon that you come across in your daily life. Perhaps this helps explain, to a sure extent, why studies consistently prove that educated people have, statistically, happier relationships, lower rates of low, less loneliness, and a higher caste of satisfaction with life.
But is a Liberal Arts Degree Worth Information technology in Today's High-Tech World?
A Liberal Arts degree is valuable in itself, just too teaches many of the skills and abilities that are needed in the contemporary workplace. That is why managers in business, industry and government appreciate the value of a Liberal Arts caste in potential employees. They recognize the importance of what are ofttimes called "employability skills"--reading, writing, listening, speaking effectively, cognition of language, critical thinking, problem-solving, basic numeracy, information literacy and the capacity to go on to learn for life--and know that UNO Liberal Arts programs take always concentrated on just these skills. Students, too, empathise that Liberal Arts Faculties tend to do the best chore in developing these general employability skills. That is one of the reasons that students continue to vote with their feet by enrolling in Liberal Arts programs in high numbers.
Yet, in that location is a perception out there that technical trainees get high wage jobs in their fields while Liberal Arts graduates face loftier unemployment or can discover only low wage jobs that do not use their academy training. A common stereotype portrays the poor Liberal Arts grad stuck in a expressionless-end McJob. In fact, this is a gross misrepresentation of labor market reality. More than than e'er, an undergraduate college instruction is a sound investment. Recent studies in both the U.S. and Canada accept demonstrated that a loftier level of pedagogy translates into higher income over a person's lifetime. These studies show that nearly university graduates, including those with Liberal Arts degrees, have lower unemployment rates and higher lifetime earnings than people with only high school diplomas or technical/vocational credentials.
Only there is more to it than a simple link between instruction and income. A recent written report by the Arrangement for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) points to what it calls "literacy skills" as the central gene that pays off in any job. Literacy, in this sense, involves the types of skills that are fostered in Liberal Arts programs: the ability to sympathise and use prose, to clarify documents, and to work with numbers. The study, entitled Literacy Skills for the Knowledge Society, contains data comparing the literacy skills of people in 12 countries. It finds that the ability to comprehend and employ words and figures plays a strong part in determining wages, especially in countries like Canada and the United States. Information technology is worth noting, however, that low literacy rates can exist found even in people with higher education. The report points out that your educational credentials may get you lot a job in the first place, simply having potent literacy skills will make you the kind of productive and useful employee who rises through the ranks. Moreover, workers with high literacy skills can adjust more easily to irresolute circumstances, making them less vulnerable to unemployment and more than likely to be high income earners. In a rapidly changing, information-based economy, the benefits of literacy cannot be overestimated.
What Should I Do?
Only you can know what is all-time for you at this fourth dimension in your life. Still, you should explore all of your opportunities, including a Liberal Arts education. Talk to your advisor. Speak with friends, relatives or co-workers about their educational experiences. Read up on the trends and developments that might influence your decision. Admissions officers can help you become into the areas of your choice. And financial assist or awards officers can suggest you on how to access scholarships or student loans.
Whatever you practise, don't let opportunities pass you by because you have failed to become the material you need to make an informed selection. But remember, a postsecondary teaching can be expensive. Information technology is a lot of work. And it represents a major investment of time and energy. So don't waste your money or your time doing something that y'all really don't want to do. You will be happier and more probable to succeed if you lot follow your heart, do whatever you do for your own reasons, and wait at a postsecondary education for what information technology is: an opportunity for you to grow and develop every bit a human existence.
Source: https://www.unomaha.edu/college-of-arts-and-sciences/academic-advising-center/choosing-a-major/liberal-arts.php
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