The liberal arts and the civic mission of higher education are under attack in this time of economic crisis and political polarization. But we can proudly and forthrightly make the case for the civic mission of higher education. The purpose of the liberal arts is to prepare people for responsible citizenship, and the best forms of civic engagement…

In this article, the author looks at several popular international relations textbooks in light of his experience teaching students in the Middle East. He finds that, for their many strengths, most of the books lack some key features that would make them more useful for students abroad.

Qatar can afford to purchase pretty much anything--including top-quality American university education. However, given the vast differences in culture, dress, religion, and social mores, along with youth's global unemployment rates and their hankering for all things technological, does it make sense for Qatar to import a course in acting?…

The international branch campus is a relatively new but growing phenomenon that raises many questions of values, pedagogy, and culture and is also receiving increasing scrutiny. What an international branch campus imports unchanged from its home country, in terms of curriculum, student services, and culture, and what it adapts to local populations…

Higher education institutions today are increasingly considered to be "means," serving as suppliers for employers, not "ends" that address "wicked" problems. This disregards their role in the generational succession of civil societies. Massive open online courses can strengthen higher education institutions by working…

This article is critical of the implementation of massive open online courses (MOOCs) by institutions seeking the deep student learning often found in general education learning outcomes. Customized student interaction with an expert in the field is rendered impossible by the scale of mooc enrollment. Concerns are also raised about the economic…

Hyperspecialization in the disciplines and the rewards for that combined with the growing mantra for first job preparation are double threats to liberal teaching and learning. Given that circumstance, the sorts of synthetic lecture classes in the humanities and social sciences that once provided the foundations of liberal learning have evaporated.…

The spirit of the liberal arts has been undermined by overspecialization, and it has been further damaged by the increase in emphasis on the economic purpose of education. The spirit might be renewed by using the aims of the liberal arts to develop every course we teach.

In 2009 and 2010, the author was involved in two University of Botswana initiatives on graduate employability. The first was a university-wide task force exploring the attitudes of students and staff and recommending reforms both in learning and teaching and in support services for students. The second was a Faculty of Humanities tracer study, in…

In this article, the author investigates the role that world history might play in reshaping the liberal arts to better serve a twenty-first-century world that is increasingly interconnected, plural, and "globalized." While "Western civ" courses and perspectives are much less influential today than they were in the first seven decades of the…

In this article, the author argues that the content of what folklorists study pervades all avenues of human interaction, from the food court to the lecture hall, and adverting to the seemingly negligible, interstitial, and ephemeral moments of informal communication is not only fruitful but a necessary complement to the liberal arts. These four…

Liberal arts universities are under mounting pressure to maintain their position of relevance in an increasingly technological and economically competitive world, while professional journalism is steadily losing ground to social media. This essay argues that a new partnership between journalism schools and the academic community would be…

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other related social communications technologies have changed the way human beings communicate. They have given individuals the capacity to disseminate information much more quickly and much more broadly than ever before. As the author will argue here, the success of these technologies is premised on their ability…

A liberal arts environment invites the expansion of one's understanding of himself/herself and the world by exposing him/her to multiple disciplines across the humanities and social sciences. For its part, the topic of "narrative" is intrinsically interdisciplinary and, as such, can be explored to particular advantage within a liberal arts…

Emile Durkheim, the sociologist and education professor, said that the personality developed by a form of literary study was contrary to genuinely Christian character. Provoked by this insight, the author explores whether a Christian university's reliance on classical liberal arts education might be working against its desires for the character of…