The Liberal Arts Degree - A Waste of Money or An Investment In Learning?

The Liberal Arts degree has long been viewed as the best of investments for the future, as it serves to diversify the learning experience by requiring students to take classes outside of their content areas. This multifaceted educational approach is supposed to make students capable of completing tasks that require skills in the sciences or the humanities. Naturally, branching into those (mainstream) subjects not within your content area can make you more marketable to future employers.

So - you are saying - what is the negative in all of that? Cost in opposition to value. Employers are beginning to see that a rise in the number of students led to four year programs are taking a toll on the value of a degree. Some colleges and universities have begun to inflate grades and turn away promising students, hindering the value of a degree. When an institution of higher learning produces the best students by selecting only the best students, one cannot help but wonder if the student would have been successful anyway, as he or she probably would have been. This is one of the arguments against the general value of a degree from discerning colleges: if a student has the will to do well, he or she will do well with or without the degree.

Lastly, the liberal arts degree loses value among workers, as the cost of earning a degree outweighs the potential earnings beyond graduation. What is the reason for this, you may ask. It is due to the growing cost of attending college and the ever-increasing interest rates for student loans. What a student makes in the years immediately following graduation is consumed by the debt incurred by earning the degree.

The choice to attend college is one that takes much consideration. College is not for everyone, but most certainly opens doors for those who choose to attend and invest in their education. College is an option for higher learning, but certainly not the only one. Vocational schools, apprenticeships, and online lectures offer alternatives to the traditional four year academic program. Ultimately, the acquisition of a degree does not mean you are more capable than the next person, but it certainly can make you more marketable to potential employers.