Importance Of Liberal Arts

Liberal Arts: Necessity or Luxury?

There is a debate about if liberal arts are still applicable in today’s society. Well, Sanford Ungar, in his work “The New Liberal Arts,” unveils eight misperceptions of modern day liberal arts in our post-secondary educational institutions. Society has labeled liberal education as too expensive, unnecessary, and out of date. Liberal arts are the baseline for education and the author exploits the untold truths of the benefits of obtaining a liberal arts degree. Ungar reveals to us that liberal arts still hold a worthy place in society ranging from communication skills, better writing, and having a degree that covers a wide range of topics that could be applied to a plethora of jobs in the work force. He tests

Ungar believe finances shouldn’t play a significant role in whether or not you are able to get a liberal arts degree. Ungar says “Misperception No 1: A liberal arts degree is a luxury that most families can no longer afford (227).” Ungar is saying that it’s actually feasible and easily obtainable. I have to disagree because it is common knowledge to see that the current costs to attend a university is rising annually. The cost of community college is also increasing even though it is at a slower pace than private universities. The idea that this type of education is at everyone’s finger tips is false. It’s important to realize that not every human (or every American) has the privilege of receiving a baseline liberal arts education. Ungar believes that “we cannot assign different socioeconomic groups to different levels of education (229)”, and I agree but we also can’t expect everyone to want or pursue this degree. We can’t let one race or ethnic group flourish in the academic setting but we also can’t pressure the opposite group to pursue a costly degree they don’t want just so they can keep up. There are other fields of work we can push people, all people, to be

There are the STEM careers, medical fields, and even the arts. Ungar believes that “the liberal arts encompass the broadest possible range of disciplines in the natural sciences (229).” Ungar is implying that liberal arts spans across an array of different majors and career paths. Liberal arts can equip you with better reading, writing, and communication skills but you don’t need a liberal arts degree to learn those good qualities that an employer is looking for. The reality in this situation is that if we spent more time on basic life skills like public speaking and reading things besides Shakespeare and Dickinson at the high school we would all be able to have a tool belt full of liberal arts knowledge without paying top dollar for a baseline education. Ungar has the bar set pretty high for the liberal arts degree and I agree that those skills are very critical in the work force but I think the real issue here is that people do not want to spend any amount of money on obtaining skills they should’ve received for free in their previous twelve years of free public education. We shouldn’t have to backtrack and work for a whole separate degree before jumping into what we actually want to do if that particular degree is something outside of the liberal