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“A liberal arts education also offers the ability to focus on large ideas. We live in a world where everyone is multitasking, often skimming the surface and reacting to sound bites. But as undergraduates, we had the opportunity to read great literature and history, to focus and to consider. This developed a standard of depth…

“Anyone making the case for the irrelevance of liberal arts colleges cannot explain away the oversize contribution that graduates of liberal arts colleges continue to make to commerce, science, technology, the arts, and higher education. As you know, just 3 percent of American college graduates are educated at a residential liberal arts college. Yet the…

“Liberal education is about cultivating in students a set of capacities and talents, rather than preparing them for a particular profession or imparting to them a particular body of knowledge or set of discrete skills. I think liberal education develops a person’s capacities like nothing else. […] To help students cultivate humane instincts, to develop…

Scholarships & Fellowship Opportunities ► Alpha Kappa Alpha Merit Scholarship: Offers $750-$2,500 to undergraduate and graduate students who   are excelling academically. Deadline: April 15, 2012 ► DAAD: German Studies Research Grant (DAAD): The DAAD offers the opportunity for undergraduates and graduates to study abroad in Germany. At least two years of college German, or the…

Excerpt: Recent college graduates who as seniors scored highest on a standardized test to measure how well they think, reason and write — skills most associated with a liberal arts education — were far more likely to be better off financially than those who scored lowest, says the survey, released Wednesday by the Social Science…

Excerpt: “The biggest complaint: The undergraduate degrees focus too much on the nuts and bolts of finance and accounting and don’t develop enough critical thinking and problem-solving skills through long essays, in-class debates and other hallmarks of liberal-arts courses. Companies say they need flexible thinkers with innovative ideas and a broad knowledge base derived from…

The student answers: “Your company will teach me the industry. My degree taught me to learn, analyze, and think through complex issues. It’s also taught me to communicate effectively through writing and speech. That’s what I’ll bring to your company.” The manager stated that he was very skeptical, and not sure why he was interviewing…

From the Chronicle of Higher Ed: “What makes the American college experience valuable–and how can we preserve it? Andrew Delbanco, director of American studies at Columbia University, wrestles with those questions in his new book, College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be. He spoke with us about why liberal education is a principle worth…

Excerpt: “We also need to make clear that in promoting the humanities, we are not deriding the sciences or encouraging trade-offs between the two. For the health of our society, we need to train minds that have learned plural disciplines and can move freely among them.  Our colleagues in China and Singapore are trying to…

Thinking of law school? Make sure to go with your eyes wide open. This recent piece in the Atlantic argues that the law school “bubble” has popped: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/pop-goes-the-law-school-bubble/254792/