Amid all the current discussion of the value of a liberal education, and the pressure on colleges and universities to articulate benefits and career outcomes, the role of the arts is particularly important. In this article, the author explores the place of the creative and performing arts in a liberal education. He stresses that on campuses,…

The author believes there are three conceptual and somatic (from the Greek, meaning "of the body") changes that could be made in order to better educate the student body and, thereby, help sustain the intellectual and social relevance of the liberal arts as a program of study. First, the commitment to what Sir Ken Robinson has called "the…

When the author attended a Network for Academic Renewal conference sponsored by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) in 2011, he was surprised by the level of skepticism expressed from the podium about proprietary higher education. This article is intended as a response. From his perspective as a for-profit educator, the…

In recent years, the health professions have moved from "eminence-based" solutions to "evidence-based" problem solving. This evolution provides new opportunities to implement integrative curricula for those preparing for the health professions. These new curricula can be built on the Essential Learning Outcomes identified through the Association…

As far as the foundational education of artists and designers is concerned, there is a sense that the natural sciences are of marginal importance, that they deal primarily with matters of material fact rather than the concerns of critical thought or cultural discourse. The author contends that the natural sciences can be quintessential liberal…

Much has been written about higher education's increasing reliance on contingent academic labor over the last few decades. The narrative, which includes differing accounts of what, or who, is most to blame, has been well rehearsed: the increase came in slow and steady waves tied to significant political and economic events, including postwar…

The widespread sense that faculties at US colleges and universities need to be more diverse is tied to the sense that the students at US colleges and universities have become more diverse, which indeed they have. The increase in diversity in higher education over the last forty years has been matched by an increase in wealth. Thus the question…

The recession of 2008-2009 and the continuing decline in local, state, and federal funds available to support higher education have resulted in serious budget cuts and belt-tightening. Given that faculty constitute an institution's most costly resource, it was not surprising, though it is nonetheless disheartening, to learn of the University of…

Economists Philip Babcock and Mindy Marks recently assembled time-series survey data on college student time use from a number of sources spanning four decades. Their study, titled "The Falling Time Cost of College: Evidence from a Half Century of Time Use Data," will appear in a forthcoming issue of the "Review of Economics and Statistics." While…

Saint Mary's College, a single-gender Catholic institution in northern Indiana with approximately 1,600 students, has just revised a general education curriculum that had been in place for nearly forty years. The board of trustees unanimously approved the new curriculum in April 2010. In this article, the author discusses seven key lessons learned…

The humanities are at the heart of knowing about the human condition; they are not a luxury. The erosion of support for the humanities and the perennial anxiety about the state of the humanities are systemic. The author contends that until people acknowledge this fact, they will keep lurching from one point to another, unable to recognize the…

Although the author has been teaching for over a quarter century, he was never trained in, nor truly understood, "outcomes assessment." He regarded it as a task to be completed for an outside accreditor that had little relation to his real "liberal arts" goals for students. Those goals include teaching critical self-awareness, developing…

A decade ago, research on the civic engagement and learning of young people was still in a "bear market" (Cook 1985). The body of literature was strikingly small, considering that the future of democracy depends on the preparation of young citizens. Today, the situation is dramatically different. There is a torrent of research on youth civic…

By definition, democracies depend on citizens' involvement in their governance. Laws and institutions are necessary but insufficient for sustaining such systems; democracies also depend on certain psychological dispositions in the people, with an ethic of civic participation, trust in others, and tolerance of dissenting views topping the list. The…

Encouragement of service as public work is one strategy higher education can use in fulfilling its civic mission to socialize society's future leaders. The diversity of American higher education includes large land grant state universities, small liberal arts colleges, religiously sponsored institutions, and local community colleges. This array…