A call for more liberal education for all
By Matthew Dembicki, Published January 21, 2010

An association that promotes undergraduate liberal education is calling on higher education institutions—including community colleges—to infuse a broader education into all programs, especially in training and technical programs.

“Narrow training—the kind currently offered in far too many degree and certificate programs—will actually limit human talent and opportunity for better jobs in today’s knowledge economy,” the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) said in a statement.

AAC&U is encouraging colleges to set more ambitious goals to use liberal education to teach communication, complex problem-solving skills and collaborative skills, among others.

“New investments should create clear linkages between short-term training programs and degree programs that carry long-term value in the economy and in our democratic society,” AAC&U said. “Programs that provide job-specific and short-term training will continue to be needed, but such programs now need to be transparently connected to the intended learning outcomes and curricular requirements for high-quality associate and bachelor’s degrees.”

The AAC&U recommendations follow the release of a survey the association commissioned that shows employers want those types of skills in their employees. Most of the surveyed employers said they want their workers to take on more responsibilities, use a broader range of skills and coordinate better with other departments.

Employers think colleges are doing a sub-par job preparing students with those types of skills, according to the survey by Hart Research Associates. Only one in four employers thinks that two-year and four-year colleges are doing a good job preparing students to succeed in a global economy.

Developing those broad skills is especially needed at community colleges, which offer associate of arts degrees that include more liberal education components, and associate of science degrees, which are more training and technical focused, noted Eduardo Padrón, AAC&U board chair and president of Miami Dade College in Florida.

Technology is changing so rapidly that skills for a growing number of jobs are often obsolete in a few years, Padrón said. It’s imperative for students seeking to acquire technical skills for specific jobs also attain a quality liberal education that will sharpen their critical-thinking and other general workplace skills that they can convey to new jobs and careers, he said.

Businesses are looking for workers that are not “task-driven” but rather driven by initiative, Padrón said. Some workers are good are completing assigned tasks, but they don’t take the initiative to branch out and find solutions to new problems or develop new ideas.

“Those are critical skills that are invaluable,” said Padrón, who heads the largest higher education institution in the U.S., serving more than 170,000 students.

There is data backing the call for more liberal education in all sectors of higher education, but implementing it comes down to funding.

A survey by the Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity and Accountability that paired higher education spending and enrollment shows that private research universities spend more than $22,000 per student than community colleges, which enroll nearly six times the number of students.

The data indicate that more affluent colleges have the resources to infuse more general education components into curricula and offer services to help students develop broader skills through projects that rely on critical thinking and problem solving, said Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. That means more graduates from those colleges have the broader skills that will transfer to all types of careers and jobs than students from community colleges, he said.