Silent Spring?

By Carol Geary Schneider, in Liberal Education: Spring 2003, Vol. 89, No 2

In her president's message, Carol Geary Schneider observes the prevalence of liberal education staples in the American higher education tradition, such as cultivating intellectual and ethical judgment and preparing graduates for lives of civic responsibility and employment. She contrasts the presence of these components with Americans' ambivalence toward the terms used to describe them: "liberal" or "liberal arts." "The tradition itself," she notes, "is largely concealed from public notice." Colleges and universities, she points out, tout the merits of liberal education in their brochures, but don't often identify its virtues with the phrase itself.

Liberal education has long been held synonymous with success, democratic freedom, opportunity, excellence, and scientific progress, she writes, and the modern-day tradition now incorporates the best of modern-day innovations: learning communities, writing-across-disciplines, undergraduate research, and capstone projects, among others. Students may be experiencing the fruits of a long tradition of liberal education Schneider writes, but "students who participate in [these plans] may never be told that they are engaged in a liberal education."

Schneider writes that public confusion about what constitutes a good liberal education coupled with politicians' drive to prioritize workforce development as the main aim of college puts the nation in danger of squandering an opportunity. A new majority enrolling in higher education can now achieve "the kind of capacious liberal education once reserved for a tiny elite."

To view the entire article, visit www.aacu.org/liberaleducation/le-sp03/le-sp03presidentsmessage.cfm.