The conflation of liberal & professional education: pipedream, aspiration, or nascent reality?

Liberal Education, Fall, 2006 by Todd S. Hutton

WHEN I ADDRESS prospective students and their parents each year during our fall open house, I like to talk about how Utica College brings together professional preparation and liberal education so that students are prepared for the first step in their careers, for lifelong learning and career adaptability, and for community leadership and global citizenship. And every year, I see the eyes of seventeen-year-olds glaze over and the heads of parents nod in hesitant agreement. I suspect there are a number of reasons for the glaze and hesitation. Most students and parents really do not understand what it means to integrate liberal and professional learning. We at Utica College don't yet fully understand it ourselves, after all, and we are spending considerable time working on it. So it is asking a lot to expect students and parents to comprehend the advantages in a few short minutes.

Students and parents arrive at our open house having heard different messages from high school counselors, teachers, and family friends about the relative merits of professional programs and liberal arts programs. For many, a college education is the road to a better life. It is, first and foremost, about preparing for a good job. Few would deny that a college education will impart other important benefits, but the sacrifices that so many students and their families make to pay for a college education are substantially about financial return and, more generally, personal welfare. How often do academic advisers on campuses across America hear (and, I fear, sometimes say) that it is important to get core courses out of the way early?

Liberal learning, often synonymous with general education, is too frequently seen as part of the rite of passage. It is not regarded as having intrinsic value or as contributing to personal welfare and career preparation (at least at a comprehensive college like my own institution). Many parents believe that the liberal arts are for those who can afford such luxury. They do not want their son or daughter tragically imitating the cartoon that shows a college graduate standing on a street corner with a sign that reads, "Liberal arts graduate. Will think for food."

Part of the confusion is also the result of students and parents thinking of Utica College as a liberal arts college, based solely on the fact that it is a small, private college. This confusion, which is even shared by some of Utica's faculty and staff, is not uncommon in the world of higher education. The idea of a liberal arts college is confounded by the imprecise and evolving classifications we have for colleges and universities, as well as by the market decisions that determine the use of the word "college" or "university."

Take, for example, the classifications defined by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Prior to 1994, the foundation classified baccalaureate institutions that awarded more than half of their degrees in the arts and sciences as "Liberal Arts Colleges I & II," with the distinction between the two based upon the selectivity of admissions standards. In 1994, the foundation changed the name of the classifications to "Baccalaureate (Liberal Arts) Colleges I" and "Baccalaureate Colleges II." Institutions included in the Baccalaureate I classification had to award 40 percent or more of their baccalaureate degrees in liberal arts fields and had to be "restrictive" in admissions. In other words, an institution could conceivably award 60 percent of its undergraduate degrees in professional fields but still be classified as a liberal arts college.

With the most recent revision in 2001, Carnegie returned to the 50 percent threshold and revised the classifications to "Baccalaureate Colleges-Liberal Arts" and "Baccalaureate Colleges-General." Add to the equation the fact that a liberal arts college with a traditional arts and science curriculum, one master's degree, and 1,200 students can call itself a university; a college with a medical school can call itself a college; a college with twelve master's degrees and two first-professional doctorates cannot legally (at least in one state) call itself a university; and a community college in some states can drop "community" from its name. Is it any wonder there is confusion, and there are even qualms, among the general public about what defines a liberal arts college and liberal arts education?

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This confusion over what is liberal and what is professional, over what is a liberal arts college and what is not, provides an interesting backdrop to the question about the conflation of liberal and professional education.

Integration of liberal learning objectives into professional curricula

When I talk with prospective students and their parents--and also alumni--about the integration of professional preparation and liberal learning, I have in mind two characteristics of this curricular and pedagogical phenomenon. The first is the mutual integration of liberal and professional learning objectives. With greater emphasis placed on general education during the last couple of decades, one should not be surprised to see the integration of liberal learning objectives into professional curricula. However, the reverse is not true. It is much more surprising to see professional or career-related goals integrated into a liberal arts curriculum.