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

Liberal Education, Fall, 2006 by Todd S. Hutton

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Calls for accountability are all around us. America's leaders are looking to colleges and universities to educate the next generation of scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and leaders. They are looking to us to do our part in making America competitive in a global marketplace where new giants are emerging. They are looking to us to produce the thinkers, ethicists, and philosophers who can grapple with complex moral issues. Joan Stark and Malcolm Lowther's twenty-year-old warning could not be more relevant today: liberal and professional study need not be mutually exclusive. Indeed, the demands of the world in which we live today more than ever require new ways of thinking about old divisions between liberal arts and professional studies.

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REFERENCES

Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. 2000. Achieving quality and continuous improvement through self-evaluation and peer review: Standards for accreditation, business administration and accounting. St. Louis: Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business.

Association of American Colleges and Universities. 2004. Taking responsibility for the quality of the baccalaureate degree. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities.

Schneider, C. G. 2004. Practicing liberal education: Formative themes in the re-invention of liberal learning. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities.

Stark, J. S., and M. A. Lowther. 1988. Strengthening the ties that bind: Integrating undergraduate liberal and professional study. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.

TODD S. HUTTON is president of Utica College.