Lindsey Pascoe Source 4

Why have such dramatic changes occurred in the status of liberal education?

McGrath, Earl James. The Graduate School and the Decline of Liberal Education. New York: Published for the Institute of Higher Education by the Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1959. Web.

In this eBook, I focused mainly on the topics covered in Part 2 because they better related to my research question. This section talks about how the dominance of graduate schools has contributed to the decline of liberal arts colleges. These institutions have, under the influence of graduate schools, shifted their emphasis from the dissemination to the creation of knowledge and from teaching to research. The shortcomings of these liberal arts colleges cannot be reversed until the power of graduate institutions over liberal arts colleges is exposed to the public view and then improved from there. Higher education has confused the purposes of liberal arts colleges and misdirected their efforts. Moreover, they have been deprived of the freedom to determine policies governing their own student's education. This has resulted in teaching at all universities revolving around investigative activities. Most of this is due to the fact that the reins for higher education were originally placed in the hands of graduate faculty whose main interests lay in research. In order for reorientation of the liberal arts college to occur, drastic reforms in graduate education must first take place by revising and clarifying the purposes of graduate education.

This article brings about the new ideas that maybe graduate institutions have not caused an increase in STEM majors but rather a decrease in the effectiveness of resources to achieve a liberal arts education. This would make sense that a seemingly inflation of STEM majors has occurred when less students are pursuing education in liberal arts. I agree with the source that graduate institutions have reoriented teaching in liberal arts colleges to make it less directed towards the arts and more directed towards the research. This source leads me to an answer to the question for this blog because it directly states that the dominance of graduate schools have contributed to the decline of liberal arts colleges from the very beginning of higher education. The source uses direct examples through Harvard University to prove this idea due to the reins for liberal education institutions being placed in graduate faculty's hands. It makes sense that the status of liberal education would be declining when graduate education institutions have taken over and are controlling how these schools educate their students.

This source makes a huge connection for me with a previous source regarding the continuous need for increasing STEM majors. It makes sense that there seems to be an increase in STEM majors even though there is still a shortage because what is actually happening is a decline in liberal arts majors. Also, this source is in conversation with my previous source because it talks about how liberal arts colleges have reoriented their teaching towards more of a research standpoint which would no doubt cause less people to pursue these majors due to ineffective teaching strategies when they could be more successful pursuing a research-oriented major in the STEM fields. This could also effect student autonomy when choosing a major because they are already under the impression that liberal arts colleges are declining in status and so they will be inclined to not choose these majors and will be stuck choosing STEM majors instead.

I have been led by this source to ask the new question of how does the decline in liberal arts education contribute to the functioning of higher education? This question may be too broad to ask for a journal entry so maybe I will restrict my search to the functioning of liberal colleges or simply the functioning of higher education institutions. Answers that I have so far are that STEM majors are still in increasing need but seem to be increasing due to the fall of liberal arts education, which is due in part to the increasing dominance that graduate education institutions have instilled in how liberal arts colleges teach their students. Also, these factors influence student autonomy because they are limited on successful majors choices as liberal arts education declines.