Making the Case for Liberal Education

Ohio's Problem Isn't Brain Drain; It's Myopia

Richard J. Scaldini
Excerpted from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 9, 2002

Focused on the parade to greener pastures of those with science and engineering degrees -- at least those with advanced degrees--Northeast Ohio and the rest of the state too often fail to recognize an abundant resource on which to fashion a new economy: the Ohio liberal arts graduate.

At Hiram College, as well as at the many other liberal arts institutions with which Ohio is blessed, education is intersecting with economic development to produce the new, young leaders of tomorrow's workforce. And these young people, with the ideal formative experience to make Ohio competitive in a globally competitive marketplace, like it here. They're staying in droves.

The liberal arts college - a uniquely American institution - responds quite remarkably to the new economy's demands. As the late John Kemeny, former president of Dartmouth College, characterized it: liberal arts education produces broadly educated people by "preparing students to answer questions we haven't even thought of ..." In other words, a liberal arts education is the foundation for continuous learning, one of the principal success factors for the globally competitive organization.

At Hiram College, we open not one but many doorways to the knowledge age.
With 50% of Hiram undergraduates studying abroad during their Hiram careers, our students gain exposure to a diverse world by participating in foreign programs at more than six times the national rate.

On campus and abroad, Hiram places an emphasis on interdisciplinary study. The world's problems do not come neatly packaged in functional terms; accordingly, our students benefit from dealing with issues in something approximating their actual complexity. In Japan, for example, our most recent study program was co-led by an art historian and a professor of management who gave students a perspective on how Japanese culture is reflected in management practices.

Nor is it enough to learn theory, even across a range of disciplines that includes arts, economics, history, literature, physical and conceptual sciences and philosophy. Intellectual and moral development is leveraged with the experience of internships, fieldwork, joint ventures and collaborative research. Under the tutelage of a Hiram genetics professor, 10 Hiram biology students are collaborating to map the genome of a plant growth. They share their results with a biotech company that will develop commercial applications from the work.

Experiential learning combines the "hard skills" training of the workplace with the conceptual formation of the classroom. Students test theories and methods against real world constraints; in turn, they exploit their theoretical training to see beyond the "flavor of the month" in current practices and methods. This mix of the theoretical and the practical produces "hands-on" thinkers who are effective in today's competitive environment and equipped to see the emergence of tomorrow's.

Liberal arts education is the knowledge matrix of the global competitive environment. With its cultivation of scientific, social and cultural literacy, it prepares the student for an increasingly diverse and complex world. With its development of critical and analytical skills, it prepares the student to grasp the direction of the changes that sweep over us. It is the education that mirrors the world in which we live and shapes the leaders we require.

Richard J. Scaldini is president of Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio.

The Presidents' Campaign for the Advancement of Liberal Learning is supported by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. For more information contact Bethany Zecher Sutton at 202-387-3760.