A return to understanding: Making liberal education valuable again

Critical literature on liberal education since the 1990s discerns two main trends which pose a serious threat to liberal education in the contemporary world. These are, firstly, the trend of liberal arts colleges offering a more professional curriculum and, secondly, the trend among universities and colleges in general to promote values which used to be inherently liberal. The result is that liberal arts colleges risk becoming superfluous as educational institutions, given that they no longer add anything distinctive in today’s society. This article proposes that a return in their core curriculum to more traditional philosophies of liberal education could supply liberal arts colleges with the necessary measure of distinction to preserve their inherent value to society.