Last year I wrote a post titled “So You Want to be a Liberal Arts Professor.” At the time, I promised a series of pieces on the subject, but then my job as a liberal arts college professor got in the way…. Oh well. Among other things, I got mired in a faculty...
Earlier today, I received an email alerting me to the fact that the University of the West of England’s Academic Board supported a recommendation from the Vice Chancellor’s Executive Group to close...
Steve Walt opines that "would-be foreign policy wonks" should basically get a classical liberal-arts education, and he uses a traditional justification for this: "In world that is both diverse and...
I didn't meet many faculty on my recent tour of New England liberal arts colleges (and a few Ivies), but one scholar I dined with provided this great line about foreign language study: "Optimists...
What does a citizen need to know? What skills and knowledge should we assume in our interactions with others? What makes a person a well-rounded person? The issues go back for centuries, and every so often some suggests modifications to the list of "liberal arts." I teach at a university with a "liberal arts" requirement, and I know from experience the battles to have a class listed as required (or optional) include issues of academic politics and teaching philosophy. The outcomes of those battles can make or break particular classes, or entire programs.A group of scholars has published a...
In other depressing academic-job-market-related news, Wisconsin Lutheran College has apparently decided to eliminate its entire Political Science department. Indeed, they appear to be removing Political Science entirely from their list of offerings:[A spokeswoman] noted that current majors will be able to take political science at other colleges in the area, at Wisconsin Lutheran's expense. And she said that the college determined it wasn't necessary to its liberal arts mission to offer political science. "We have interdisciplinary majors and other majors that can get you where you are going...