Recently, From the Academy’s founder and managing editor, Jovan Tripkovic, sat down with Alan Rubenstein, executive director of the Rosenthal-Levy Scholars Program and senior director at Tikvah. The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Jovan Tripkovic: What is the current state of liberal-arts education on America’s college campuses?
Alan Rubenstein: The term “liberal-arts education” can refer to many different things. One meaning that I would endorse is: a curriculum based on close reading of classic sources from the Western tradition. To be done well, this should be conducted with a healthy mixture of two seemingly contradictory attitudes: reverence for the genius that produced the works and a resistance to merely accepting arguments based on authority. It’s not easy to keep those two attitudes in balance; a teacher’s job is to model this balancing act. My sense is that this approach to liberal-arts education is rare on America’s college campuses today.
There is another problem that I have noticed, as well: confusing the project of educating young people with the project of recruiting and training young people for activism. Where this occurs, certain questions about the good life and the good society are treated as settled, when they ought rather to be opened up for thoughtful and open-minded inquiry.
I am not expert enough on the general state of liberal-arts education nationwide to say with confidence how common these problems are. I think it is interesting that the Manhattan Institute recently released a ranking of the best colleges in the country, and many colleges that have a high reputation scored low—both on “political tolerance” grounds and on “curricular rigor.” Readers should look for themselves to see whether this evaluation is fair.
Liberal education cannot be dead. It is too intrinsically a part of being human.
Jovan Tripkovic: Years ago, much of the mainstream media declared liberal education dead—or at least irrelevant. Do you think that’s still true today?
Alan Rubenstein: Liberal education cannot be dead. It is too intrinsically a part of being human. It may be that it is not in a healthy state on university campuses, or on most university campuses. In that case, liberal education will be conducted elsewhere.
Jovan Tripkovic: Until very recently, it seemed as though every social or economic problem could be solved by learning how to code. In 2020, President Biden even suggested at a campaign event that coal miners should learn to code. In that environment, the value of the liberal arts—and the way they prepare students to think critically and navigate academic and professional challenges—was largely ignored. What do you see as the greatest value of a liberal-arts education, and why?
Alan Rubenstein: Liberal education’s aim is summarized well by the late Eva Brann, tutor and dean at St. John’s College, who recently passed away: “Let us offer to the young some clear years for becoming not a this or a that, but for learning to be a human being, whose powers of thought are well exercised, whose imagination is well stocked, whose will has conceived some large human purpose, and whose passions have found some fine object of love about which to crystallize.”
Those who attain a truly high-quality liberal-arts education will be more likely to be interesting friends, caring parents, inspired employers, and, in some important cases, energetic and influential public figures.
Jovan Tripkovic: As a professor who works with young adults every day, do you think that today’s college students share your views on the importance of the liberal arts?
Alan Rubenstein: In my experience, there are many students who want to read great works of literature and philosophy and discuss how they shed light on questions of meaning. When I offered an extra-curricular reading group called “Windows on the Good Life” at Carleton College, several dozen students expressed interest. Their interest led the administration to agree to offer the course for credit. Over a decade or so, I led that class with over one thousand students There are reports of a drop-off in interest in humanities subjects. I can confirm having seen this at institutions I have been affiliated with. My sense is that the drop-off is due to (a) over-specialization of the content and (b) too much of an ideological agenda. If humanities courses are taught the right way, students want to take them and to work hard in them.
Jovan Tripkovic: How does a liberal-arts education prepare students for the workforce, and does it actually improve their long-term career prospects?
Alan Rubenstein: Employers, in my experience, want to hire people who think well, have a knack for curiosity, and are interesting to be around. They will even give an edge to a job candidate who has these traits over someone with more traditional credentials. Interviews matter for a reason.
Jovan Tripkovic: With the rapid emergence of AI, many tech jobs may disappear or fundamentally change. What impact do you think AI will have on liberal-arts education? Will it replace it—or, perhaps, make it more important?
Alan Rubenstein: I wonder about this very much. Most people in the education world worry primarily about cheating. That is, indeed, a serious problem. But the answer to cheating is the same thing it always was: Do what you can to make sure that shameful activities generate the appropriate amount of shame.
The more interesting question is how students will think differently once they are used to using AI as a sounding board for ideas and research. I believe that once we have acclimated to using AI, we’ll still have questions about what constitutes a worthy life, and we’ll still want to examine the great works of human beings, from both the pre-AI and post-AI age, in philosophy, literature, history, music, and other areas.
Jovan Tripkovic: I’d like to end with a simple question: What is one book you think every college student pursuing a liberal-arts education should read?
Alan Rubenstein: Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.
Jovan Tripkovic is the founder and managing editor of From the Academy and communications manager at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. Alan Rubenstein is the executive director of the Rosenthal-Levy Scholars Program at the University of Florida and a senior director at Tikvah.