City Journal Delves Into the Crisis of Liberal Education
22nd September 2024
The degradation of liberal education in America is anything but a niche public-policy concern.
Like all rights-protecting democracies – and especially as a 21st-century great power with globe-spanning interests – the United States requires a host of highly-trained individuals to keep its government functioning, military operating, economy churning, and civil society thriving. Essential men and women perform manual labor, offer basic services, and run small businesses. In addition, the nation needs physicists, chemists, and biologists; lawyers, doctors, and business executives; teachers, software engineers, and architects; journalists and civil servants; military officers, politicians, diplomats, judges, and religious leaders; and many more.
To acquire the professional skills necessary to fill key roles in America’s advanced industrial society, individuals must typically obtain a four-year college degree. Prestigious undergraduate programs, which incubate America’s highly credentialed elites, purport to offer the requisite professional training – or requisite introduction to professional training – within the framework of liberal education.