In this series of posts, I’ve been looking for proof that a liberal arts and sciences degree will improve your chances of getting a job. To start at the beginning, go back to my first post in this series, What is a liberal arts degree?

I started out by reading the information on the website PBK Toolkit, which had sources for their assertions. (I almost said “facts,” but I now heavily doubt whether the assertions are indeed facts.) When I came to an interesting assertion, I would look up the source. But I got tired of being intrigued by the assertion only to look up the source and finding it to not be meaningful. So then I jumped straight to their reference section and started going through their sources one by one. Unfortunately, I still didn’t find any sources I considered convincing.

Then I realized that there are two references at the beginning of the PBK Toolkit which I overlooked when I was just analyzing the sources of intriguing statistics I saw quoted. I’ll go back to those now.

Will a liberal arts degree lead to employment?

China is copying the United States Liberal Arts System

Here are the first two sources of the PBK Toolkit.

Eric Abrahamsen, “A Liberal Arts Education, Made in China,” The New York Times: July 3, 2012; Pericles Lewis, PBK Toolkit

“Asia Invests in Liberal Arts: US Higher Education Expands Abroad” Harvard International Review, Cambridge, MA: Spring 2013, PBK Toolkit

Maybe it’s ironic, but more than when educators in the United States say that a liberal arts and sciences education is important, when the Chinese are looking at a liberal arts education, it makes me take notice.

That’s because…

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A liberal arts degree will teach you skills that employers are looking for when they hire. When you’re researching college majors, colleges vs. universities, and types of degrees, you will see this statement often. But is it true? In this series of posts, I’m looked up some references used to prove that a liberal arts and sciences degree will improve your chances of getting a job. I’m not convinced yet.

But before we leave this subject of liberal arts and science majors’ earning potential, consider this article:

WSJ: Grads Of Selective Research Universities Far Out Earn Grads Of Selective Liberal Arts Colleges…

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In my last post, I decided that I wasn’t convinced that graduates with liberal arts degrees end up earning more than preprofessional, or professional degrees. There may be something in the full report that would answer my questions, but I don’t have access to that so I went looking on my own across the internet for more sources and some more specific data.

All I found were articles quoting these same sources that I found in the PBK webpage that I talked about in the previous blog post referenced above.

So these sources have been widely quoted to justify a liberal arts degree. From my work as a textbook editor, I know that this is a common problem. It’s not unusual to have one source widely quoted. And if that source isn’t good, then “common knowledge” isn’t based on something that’s true. While I appreciate the effort in many of the articles I cam across, I’m still not convinced.

I found an article on the US News and World Report site interesting. The title sounded useful. …

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I have often heard the vague assertion that a liberal arts degree will best prepare you for a job. But I’m more interested in concrete results. Will it get you hired? That information is surprisingly hard to find. So I was excited to find referenced sources on the Phi Beta Kappa (liberal arts and sciences honor society) website, on a page called their toolkit. (You might want to start with the first post in this series, What is a liberal arts degree?)

I started out by looking at the references for statements that sounded substantial, only to discover that I didn’t find their sources to be very rigorous. (That’s a nice way to say that they looked too vague to convince me that they meant anything. They were only barely better than worthless.) Frustrated, I decided to quit reading the conclusions on the PBK website and just jump to their referenced sources and finish them in order. Were the statements on the website based on anything that seemed to provide substantial evidence?…

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A liberal arts degree will teach you skills that employers are looking for when they hire. When you’re researching college majors, colleges vs. universities, and types of degrees, you will see this statement often. But is it true? I was trying to find some data some data to back up that claim when I came across the PBK website Toolkit. In this series of posts, I’m looking up the references used to prove that a liberal arts and sciences degree will improve your chances of getting a job.

To get back to more of the statements made about the benefits of a liberal arts and sciences degree on the PBK Toolkit page, the next sentence to get my attention with regard to jobs was the following:

“80 percent of employers say that all students, regardless of their chosen field, should acquire broad knowledge in the arts and sciences.^{iv” PBK toolkit}…

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A liberal arts degree will teach you skills that employers are looking for when they hire. When you’re researching college majors, colleges vs. universities, and types of degrees, you will see this statement often. But is it true? I was trying to find some data some data to back up that claim when I came across the PBK website Toolkit. In this series of posts, I’m looking up the references used to prove that a liberal arts and sciences degree will improve your chances of getting a job.

“Students majoring in the liberal arts and sciences see bigger increases in “critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills” than those in other majors.^ii” PBK Toolkit, emphasis theirs

This is something that I’ve heard before, without any evidence, so I was impressed they were giving a reference. But, as a science editor I was taught to assess the quality of sources, so I went to the source….

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The cost of college is unreasonably high. Yes, I realize that by putting the word “unreasonably” in there I am stating an opinion, not a fact, which isn’t good journalistic practice. (See, I did pay attention in a those years of English I was required to take, and take, and repeat again.) But, this isn’t a post about trying to figure out why the cost of education is so high, or what the return on investment (ROI) is for college. So upfront I’m just going to state the “fact” of college cost being “unreasonably” high as a way to let you know which viewpoint I’m operating from.

Because I think that the cost of college, and therefore the degree your earn, is so expensive that it needs to be justified by something. And today I’m going to choose that the cost should be justified by how that degree helps you get a job….

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After reading the book Colleges that Change Lives, by Loren Pope, we seriously considered the possibilities of a small liberal arts college for our kids instead of a bigger, research university. Along with this came lots of discussions and considerations about the worth of a liberal arts degree. And what is a liberal arts degree anyway?

During one of these discussions my sister, who’s an astrophysicist professor at a university, made this comment.

“You know, Erin, you have a liberal arts degree.”

“Wait. What? Chemistry is a liberal ARTS degree?”…

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