Longtime Middlebury College economics professor Michael Claudon should have been ecstatic. More and more students at the quintessential Vermont liberal arts school – nearly 1 in 6 – had picked his department as a major.

But Claudon could tell many students weren’t taking his classes because they loved economics. They just thought it would help them get a job.

When he asked students once what they would do if there were some other way to get the kinds of experiences they thought employers wanted, one piped up: “I sure as hell wouldn’t be here.”

That comment was the genesis of a new class Claudon developed with alumni in business, designed to give students intense experiences that mimic real-world problem-solving.

Students demand more

Liberal arts colleges make a passionate case that the skills they offer – analysis, writing, argument – are the best preparation for a career in the ever-changing business world.

But at a time of surging college costs and rising career anxieties, they’re feeling some heat from parents and students to do more to give students a well-rounded resume.

And they’re all struggling with variants of the same question: Can liberal arts colleges maintain the distinctive education they provide, while serving students who want a clearer path to a business career?

Some colleges, like Middlebury, have started programs but taken pains to keep them separate from the traditional curriculum (Claudon’s “MiddCORE” course is offered during the winter term, a short interlude between the regular academic semesters).

But others have gone much further. Kalamazoo College in Michigan is adding a business major this year. Furman University in South Carolina has added a dozen business and account courses over the last three years. Benedictine, a Roman Catholic university in Lisle, Ill., is starting a theology major designed to provide students with skills for careers like law and business – either secular or church-related work.

Even some elite, highly selective liberal arts colleges have added to the curriculum. A new program at Claremont McKenna College in California blends coursework in areas like finance and accounting with internships and other out-of-class experiences. This fall, students at Sewanee – a small college of Oxford-style buildings on a Tennessee mountain – will be able to minor in business for the first time.

Valued skills

In surveys, employers say the liberal arts skills are the ones they value most in applicants. Many top CEOs have liberal arts backgrounds, and the most prestigious companies – Goldman Sachs, Google, McKinsey & Co. – all recruit aggressively at prestigious liberal arts colleges.

But if colleges don’t respond to the pressure students and parents are feeling, they risk getting left behind.

“What (employers) want is people with the skills to think and write and speak, but the parents don’t want to hear that,” said Maria de la Camara, dean of Benedictine’s College of Liberal Arts. “If we want to stay alive, it’s like walking on a tightrope. You don’t become a technical college and totally focus on the professional side, but you combine both sides and do it well, and turn out liberally educated professionals.”

New model

Advertisement

The new, blended model of schools combining preprofessional training and the liberal arts even has its own consortium now – the Associated New American College, founded in 1995. The group was started by a collection of schools that felt the new model wasn’t getting its due respect from pure liberal arts colleges or research universities, said Lynette Robinson, the organization’s executive director. Some of the original 10 schools have changed their focus and left the group, but overall it’s expanded to 21 institutions.

“I think people see (a preprofessional focus) as diminishing what a pure liberal arts environment can do,” she said. “But our institutions see it as enriching what a liberal arts education can be about. If you’re an engineer you need to be as critical a thinker as a math major.”

At elite colleges like Middlebury, there’s less concern about filling seats; indeed the liberal arts focus is a big part of the draw. But there are worries that once on campus, students are feeling too much preprofessional pressure – exactly what they chose Middlebury to avoid.

Aiding in the job hunt

“These are incredible life skills,” Claudon said of the liberal arts skills Middlebury teaches. “But parents are convinced that they don’t guarantee Johnny and Sally a job at graduation. So they’re hedging their bets and majoring in economics.”

Chandler Koglmeier, a political science major who took Claudon’s course at Middlebury, called it the most intense and difficult he’s taken, but also the most useful. While other students partied and skied, he and his classmates put in long hours on projects designed by professors and alumni, including coming up with practical solutions to campus problems, like reducing food waste.

“I chose to go to Middlebury because I was going to be insulated, because it was going to be a place where I could learn and think and not have to learn about real-world applications,” said Koglmeier, who worked for a market research company this summer. But programs like Claudon’s class and internships have given him the applied learning he wants without taking up class time.

Claudon says his program has been supported on campus. But faculty and alumni are fiercely devoted to the liberal arts, and he understands and even shares a reluctance to go further. Any step toward preprofessional training is a slippery slope, he said.


Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.

Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.