Walk into any Starbucks across the country, and you will encounter a highly educated college graduate whose degree in interpretative dance, Zulu, or what-have-you seems to translate into immediate hiring at any coffee shop, effective immediately after graduation. Unfortunately for millions of college students, a bachelors degree no longer guarantees a high paying position. Instead, highly intelligent graduates are stuck working multiple jobs as baristas and busboys in a never-ending race to pay back insurmountable student loans. It is not enough to simply graduate with a degree; instead, students need to be able to think, to question, to innovate, and do so better and more uniquely than any of their similarly educated peers. In other words, an impossible task. A critic of the current higher education system, William Deresiewicz, laments recent graduates\u2019 inability to connect with the common man, and failure to gain a comprehensive understanding of the world. He claims students know \u201cmore and more about less and less,\u201d decreasing their employability. ((Deresiewicz, William in \u201cHabits of Mind: Why college students who do serious historical research become independent, analytical thinkers.\u201d The American Scholar <\/i>Winter 2015.)) However, the authors of \u201cHabits of Mind,\u201d Anthony Grafton and James Grossman, suggest students should<\/i> be highly specialized, in order to switch from a \u201cpassive observer\u201d to a \u201ccreator\u201d and to become an independent, self-reliant thinker ((Grafton, Anthony and James Grossman. \u201cHabits of Mind: Why college students who do serious historical research become independent, analytical thinkers.\u201d The American Scholar <\/i>Winter 2015.)). But liberal arts schools combine both views. Students are well-rounded and well-informed, while still specializing in an area that teaches them the skills that Grafton and Grossman revere; they possess the ability to hold conversations with plumbers and <\/i>with highly educated colleagues in multiple languages. Grafton and Grossman seem to suggest that it is impossible to be both synoptic and analytic; however, every student that walks down the steps of Old West provide evidence to the contrary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Walk into any Starbucks across the country, and you will encounter a highly educated college graduate whose degree in interpretative dance, Zulu, or what-have-you seems to translate into immediate hiring at any coffee shop, effective immediately after graduation. Unfortunately for … Continue reading