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

Liberal Education, Fall, 2006 by Todd S. Hutton

If institutions are to realize a conflation of liberal and professional education, then the liberal arts must also participate in the mutual integration of liberal and professional learning objectives. I have suggested that the professions have reached farther across the aisle to bridge the old divisions between liberal arts and professional programs. This is not to say, however, that the liberal arts are not extending their hands. At Utica College, for instance, I see majors like English endeavoring to bridge the divide between "thinking" and "doing," between the theoretical and practical, and between intrinsic and extrinsic value. In describing the English program, our English faculty assert that students who complete a major in English will be prepared "to teach, do graduate work, or enter any occupation that requires critical thinking, good writing, and a broad perspective." Detailed advising outlines prepared by the department will help students "prepare for careers in business, civil service, law, or publishing and for graduate work in English language, English as a second language, linguistics, literature, or writing."

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English faculty at institutions similar to my own describe such English and humanities-related learning outcomes as the ability to ask questions, analyze data, synthesize information, communicate effectively, and learn new concepts as particularly relevant for success in a variety of professions. Too often, however, the curricula of liberal arts majors do not take that next step. They do not incorporate learning objectives related specifically to career or professional preparation, even though they allude to preparing students for careers in business, law, public service, and the like. The reasons for this are many and varied. The challenge is to overcome the reticence and to achieve an authentic mutual integration of liberal and professional learning objectives.

As liberal study in the form of general education becomes more pervasive and rigorous for all fields of study--professional and liberal arts majors alike--I predict that the primary differentiator between professional and liberal study will increasingly become the knowledge base of the major field itself. Both will be about "doing," "thinking," and "knowing." As this transpires, the lines between liberal and professional or career programs will blur even more.

It is in this light, and in the face of the professions' appropriation of liberal arts--like intellectual goals, that a redefinition of liberal education becomes more urgent.

The Association of American Colleges and Universities' clarion call for a more pragmatic liberal education resonates strongly in this regard. Carol Geary Schneider has pointed to the need to redefine liberal education to "embrace and address the way knowledge is actually used in the world, including the world of work and civil society." She further asserts that we must make liberal education more "consciously, intentionally pragmatic, while it remains conceptually rigorous," and we must make the various themes and practices of liberal education more "intentional, connected, and cumulatively powerful frameworks for all students' learning" (2004, 5).