Relating to Liberal Arts Rather Than to Vocational Courses
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 means that your courses will exist in general areas of study--philosophy, mathematics, literature, history, economics, languages, and then on--rather than in practical or specialized fields.
A Liberal Arts education is not intended to railroad train you for a specific chore, though it does prepare y'all for the globe of work by providing you with an invaluable set of employability skills, including the ability to remember for yourself, the skills to communicate effectively, and the capacity for lifelong learning.
What Will I Report as Role of a Liberal Arts Teaching?
You will study a variety of subjects, looking at the world and its people from various points of view. You will learn nigh ideas and beliefs that have guided human beings and shaped civilizations for thousands of years. You'll ask yourself questions similar:
- What does information technology mean to be man?
- What have humans washed, thought near, and felt?
- What is truth and dazzler, and what are their value to life?
- How have we been shaped past, and how take we shaped, our physical and natural environment?
- What skills, methods or techniques tin exist used to examine the globe and its people?
A Liberal Arts education is past nature broad and diverse, rather than narrow and specialized. Choosing courses from many disciplines gives you a wide and useful didactics.
In the first year, a Liberal Arts student ordinarily takes a diversity of introductory courses. This non only gives you lot a wide noesis of subjects merely helps you to choose certain areas for further study. In well-nigh cases, you 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 (Blackness Studies, Economics, Geography, Political Science, Sociology)
- Creative Liberal Arts (Fine Art, Theatre, Speech, Artistic Writing)
- Sciences (Biological science, Chemical science, Physics, Math)
Liberal Arts studies at UNO likewise requires students to choose a major - a specific group of thematically-linked courses. By concentrating on a given subject, any it may exist, y'all will go beyond the mere surface of things and gain a solid grasp of the core fabric in a given surface area.
Why Should I Pursue a Liberal Arts Didactics?
This is the big question: Why Liberal Arts? Why not Engineering? Or Nursing? Or Information science? There are numerous ways to respond this question, and ultimately the utility of any answer will depend upon your own circumstances.
For you, studies in the Liberal Arts may provide the necessary applied skills that y'all will apply on the job; or they may set you to move on to a graduate or professional schoolhouse. For others, the key value of a Liberal Arts education may be the personal satisfaction and fulfillment that studying philosophy or art makes possible. Still others will be able to excel in today'due south global business world because the foreign language skills developed in their Liberal Arts teaching gave them an important edge.
Indeed, the reasons for pursuing a Liberal Arts education are as many equally the number of potential students. What you need to inquire is what you want to get out of a postsecondary educational activity. If yous want to get a solid, broadly-based, full general education which will improve your analytical, advice and learning abilities, then the Liberal Arts may exist for you.
What About Skills Training?
You lot have probably heard a lot of talk lately most how important it is to get the proper "skills set" and so that you lot tin can be immediately bonny to an employer. Some remember that the goal of a postsecondary education should be to provide you with as much specific training every bit possible before you 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 general Liberal Arts courses and cull instead to focus narrowly on a vocational or professional area of study. This can be an excellent selection. There are many rewarding and fulfilling careers that one can pursue with the help of a beginning-form vocational or career training programme. But make sure that you are making your educational choices for the right reasons—those that are best for you. If you are shying abroad from Liberal Arts courses because you lot think that you need training in specific skills to go a chore, you may be mistaken.
First, a Liberal Arts education does provide you with tangible, applied skills that employers value highly. What's more than, you will obtain skills and knowledge that are never obsolete. The earth is changing rapidly and there may exist a danger in preparing yourself too narrowly to fit a certain slot that may not even exist by the fourth dimension yous go into the job market. Meanwhile, the underlying skills, abilities and attributes fostered in the Liberal Arts are always relevant.
What Skills Will I Larn past Taking Liberal Arts Courses?
The list of skills, abilities, capacities and attributes normally associated with a Liberal Arts didactics includes, simply is not express to, the following:
- Analytical and noesis-building skills
- Evaluative and critical thinking skills
- Creative thinking skills
- Effective oral and written advice 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
- Power to pose meaningful questions that advance understanding and knowledge
- Ability to conduct research and organize material effectively
- Information literacy and other skills associated with learning how to learn
- Independent judgment and ethical decision-making
- Ability to meet goals, manage time, and consummate a projection successfully
- Self-confidence and self-understanding
- Ability to cooperate with others and work in teams
- Sensitivity to individuals and tolerance of cultural differences
- Ability to employ sensitive and technical equipment
- Informed openness to new information technologies
Where Can a Liberal Arts Education Take Me?
A Liberal Arts caste prepares you for hundreds of careers. Your opportunities are limited simply by your imagination, your interests and your willingness to devote fourth dimension and energy to your work. Of course, a Liberal Arts degree can also take yous to the top graduate and professional schools. Liberal Arts courses are oftentimes required for anyone who pursues a professional degree, and a high percentage of Liberal Arts graduates become on to accept further teaching. This is not surprising, since the Liberal Arts serve as a foundation for about vocational or professional studies at the university. For instance, programs in accounting, business organisation, education, journalism, and police are built upon the knowledge and skills that come from fields that make up the Liberal Arts. Accounting and concern depend upon mathematics and economic science; education derives from psychology and folklore; journalism requires a knowledge of English and history; and constabulary builds upon political science and philosophy.
Will a Liberal Arts Education Make Me a Better Person?
A Liberal Arts instruction volition enhance your cognition and amend your understanding of the earth and its people. Many say that knowledge leads to wise action, mayhap even to goodness. Thus, a Liberal Arts education may assistance you to perceive and to understand your shortcomings, allowing yous to become a improve denizen, friend, spouse, parent, human being.
Liberal Arts courses often enable students to reach beyond their own experiences and imagine worlds far distant in fourth dimension and space. By opening your eyes, ears and listen, a adept Liberal Arts education tin strengthen in yous the virtues of tolerance, sympathy, and respect for others. A Liberal Arts education will equip y'all to participate effectively in your customs. It can also help you to appoint in the controversies of our time--whether nearly the surroundings, cultural diversity, social justice, ethnic strife, gender relations or strange policy.
Can a Liberal Arts Education Brand Me Happy?
Information technology would be ridiculous to make any promises of a carefree futurity, but a Liberal Arts pedagogy tin can contribute to your happiness. Studies in the humanities offer an obvious training for leisure and life across the world of piece of work. A expert Liberal Arts education increases your capacity to understand and enjoy humanity's cultural and scientific achievements. It as well contributes to the pleasure you can get from the world around y'all. Studies in your Liberal Arts plan tin can increment your awareness and appreciation of literature, music, personality, nature, art, symbolism, wit, historical allusion or figurative language.
Simply more than that, a skillful general education allows y'all to see things whole, to provide a context for seemingly meaningless or isolated events. This may sound like an abstract benefit, but it is only this orientation for knowledge that might reduce the defoliation and frustration that comes from being unable to put into context an event, conclusion or phenomenon that you run across in your daily life. Peradventure this helps explain, to a certain extent, why studies consistently show that educated people have, statistically, happier relationships, lower rates of depression, less loneliness, and a college degree of satisfaction with life.
But is a Liberal Arts Degree Worth It in Today'due south Loftier-Tech Globe?
A Liberal Arts caste is valuable in itself, but besides 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 degree in potential employees. They recognize the importance of what are often called "employability skills"--reading, writing, listening, speaking effectively, knowledge of language, disquisitional thinking, trouble-solving, basic numeracy, information literacy and the capacity to continue to acquire for life--and know that UNO Liberal Arts programs have always concentrated on only these skills. Students, too, sympathise that Liberal Arts Faculties tend to exercise the best job in developing these general employability skills. That is i of the reasons that students proceed to vote with their feet past enrolling in Liberal Arts programs in high numbers.
Still, there is a perception out there that technical trainees get high wage jobs in their fields while Liberal Arts graduates face up loftier unemployment or can find simply low wage jobs that do not apply their university training. A common stereotype portrays the poor Liberal Arts grad stuck in a dead-end McJob. In fact, this is a gross misrepresentation of labor market reality. More than always, an undergraduate college education is a audio investment. Contempo studies in both the U.S. and Canada have demonstrated that a loftier level of education translates into higher income over a person's lifetime. These studies evidence that most university graduates, including those with Liberal Arts degrees, have lower unemployment rates and higher lifetime earnings than people with just high school diplomas or technical/vocational credentials.
But there is more to it than a elementary link between didactics and income. A recent study by the System for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) points to what it calls "literacy skills" as the key factor that pays off in any job. Literacy, in this sense, involves the types of skills that are fostered in Liberal Arts programs: the power to understand and employ prose, to analyze documents, and to work with numbers. The study, entitled Literacy Skills for the Knowledge Society, contains information comparing the literacy skills of people in 12 countries. It finds that the ability to encompass and use words and figures plays a strong role in determining wages, especially in countries like Canada and the Usa. It is worth noting, however, that low literacy rates tin exist constitute even in people with college education. The report points out that your educational credentials may become you a job in the starting time place, but having strong literacy skills will brand you the kind of productive and useful employee who rises through the ranks. Moreover, workers with high literacy skills can accommodate more than easily to irresolute circumstances, making them less vulnerable to unemployment and more likely to be high income earners. In a rapidly changing, information-based economy, the benefits of literacy cannot be overestimated.
What Should I Practise?
Only you can know what is best 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 upwards on the trends and developments that might influence your determination. Admissions officers can help you get into the areas of your choice. And financial aid or awards officers tin can advise you lot on how to access scholarships or educatee loans.
Whatever you do, don't let opportunities pass y'all by considering y'all have failed to get the fabric you need to make an informed choice. But remember, a postsecondary instruction can be expensive. Information technology is a lot of work. And information technology represents a major investment of time and free energy. And so don't waste material your money or your time doing something that you actually don't desire to practise. You will exist happier and more likely to succeed if yous follow your center, exercise whatever yous do for your ain reasons, and look at a postsecondary education for what it is: an opportunity for you to grow and develop every bit a homo.
Source: https://www.unomaha.edu/college-of-arts-and-sciences/academic-advising-center/choosing-a-major/liberal-arts.php
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