What Will a Liberal Arts Education Look Like in 50 Years?

At this year's Aspen Ideas Festival, we asked a group of academics within some of America's top universities to weigh in on the fate of higher education. "We won't have liberal arts and sciences at all 50 years from now unless we really understand how to save what's good, but reinvent what's new and needed," says Harvard University education professor Howard Gardner. Other panelists include Sebastian Thrun, Elisa New, Drew Faust, Erika Christakis, and Nicholas Dirks.

The Big Question is a series inspired by The Atlantic's back-page feature.

[hardcoreemomusicgurl]

"take risks"
With that liberal arts major, well, I am INDEED taking risks. I am no longer linear, professor.

[jthweatt]

Does anyone get the feeling they are just speaking in loops? Maybe I just wasn't paying close enough attention, but I didn't hear one coherent idea about where lib arts would be in 50 years.

Some Quotes:
"I think that you can't outsource human connection. I hope you can't"
*What the fuck does that even mean?*

"The fundamental idea of liberal arts, that was developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, has been able to keep adjusting while keeping a kind of sense of its fundamental purposes and objectives are."
*I have no idea what ideas you are referencing or how they are 'adjusting'. This statement is so formless and vapid that I can't even disagree with it.*

"I think in the future, the notion of education stopping when you leave school will be ridiculous"
*Yes, because it already is ridiculous. You don't need special insight to say that, and you still haven't made any comment on liberal arts in education*

"I believe the changes in technology will continue to change the nature of our economy, the nature of our everyday lives, the nature of our leisure activities"
*You don't fucking say? Who woulda guessed that in the future things would BE DIFFERENT*

"It'll be different? How different? I'm a historian. I use the past to try to think about the future, but I'm very reluctant to try to predict it."
*Supposedly has thoughts about the future, but goddamned if he is telling you them*

[ruzzelladrian]

Liberal Arts would be useful... if it's free.

[Lost_In_LA]

A liberal arts curriculum is what makes American higher education distinctive. Students are challenged to take courses outside of their primary interest. In practical terms, it adds a year of distribution requirements on top of the major course of study compared to the European system, but it is this aspect that allows students to experiment, develop some well rounded skills, and defer declaration of major. Socially, it is also a chance to study with classmates that have a completely different talent stack and way of thinking.

[charlottejohnson]

It will certainly be interesting to see how education evolves!

[NewLife-qjlp]

The times where you can do "whatever you want" are long over, no matter what colleges (which are for profit businesses) tell you

[FOHguy]

My favorite bumper sticker ever.
" I have a Liberal Arts degree. Do you want fries with that?"

[janey]

I' m shock of the way some of these professors think. OMG.

[miacisewski]

Eek. I really want to be an attorney (where liberal arts may be more important due to the emphasis of writing in law), but I am not great at math. I want to do economics/business/political science/IR. However, this video makes me fearful.

[nortonnorth]

There was not a single comment from faculty teaching at a traditional liberal arts institution in this video segment. If you have a liberal arts degree, you'd notice that and wonder why.

[dankosalihbasic]

Comment section is full of philosophers. There is Plato Aristotel Socrates Pythagoras Diogenes Hippocrates ! EVERYONE IS IN COMMENT SECTION!

[joesmeeth]

50 Years from now, we'll have Liberal Arts majors mowing our lawns, flipping burgers, and washing cars for those who got a real degree.

Education will become more specialized in the future. You should be tested when you are 12 to see what you should do.

[TyroneJemielWashington]

Who's the smug professor with the glasses who closes his eyes every time he talks?

[kellensarien]

This video was posted in 2014, when wokeness was entering liberal arts education big time. It was the year language like "microaggression" and "check your privilege" and "safe spaces" entered classrooms. That was the end of liberal arts education, right there. Fast forward five years . . . the liberal arts (and some of the so-called social "sciences") are now proving grounds for purity and right-thinking, for advocacy and victim solidarity, not thought and inquiry. You major in liberal arts if you want to ban speakers you disagree with from campus, if you see "colonialism" and "structural racism" and "sexualized violence" every where you look, if cancel culture is your nirvana. The tuition liberal arts students pay their institution is welfare for obnoxious busybodies. Do not major in liberal arts. Science, math, engineering, business, economics . . . these are the only things worth studying today in a university.

[danielduckington]

I hope 50 years from now, people throw gender studies or black history degree into the dustbin of history but I believe that is wishful thinking

[TangomanX]

We have been watering down liberal arts education for some time now. Lets face it, when Greek, then Latin were dropped as requirements, that watered things down. We've had a steady generation of new an useless liberal arts being discovered and replace more essential and challenging ones. Courses get watered down, and grade inflation goes up. And now, there is a phenomena in secondary education that will eventually hit college level education where a computer programming language meets the foreign language requirement.

[davidpetrusewicz]

Worried
no student no money. Keep student coming. For these teacher
Don't worried. It's only a matter of time before some one will make a UTUBE video no how to get you liberal arts degree for free