Job Training and the Liberal Arts

Martin Center: How did this working group and report come to exist?

Toby King: Last year, Peter Hans, UNC System president, approached the faculty assembly and said, “I feel that there are, in the light of some misperceptions about college education these days, some misunderstandings that could be cleared up about the value, in particular, of a liberal-arts-and-humanities-based education, where it’s more common to find misperceptions.”

“If you base the value of an education on your immediate earnings after college, you’ve selected one narrow metric.” Martin Center: What caused that misperception in the first place?

Toby King: I think there are a couple of reasons, one of which is, if you base the value of an education on your immediate earnings after college, you’ve selected one narrow metric, but you haven’t selected the many values of an education over many years or even over a lifetime. So if I get a degree in music—I teach in the music department—if I get a degree in music, my first gig out of college is not going to represent the value of that music degree to me over five years, 10 years, or 20 years. It may be that my musical education gives me an ability to communicate, to learn about shared new languages, and to use contemporary technology in a way that pays off, both in my playing and in any job I may undertake over the next few years.

“If I get a liberal-arts degree, I’m given all sorts of skills and life tools that could apply to many different life trajectories.” Martin Center: A lot of people, if they get a certain degree, they may not be getting a job in that field. Is that part of the imbalance?

Toby King: I kind of like that idea. If I get a liberal-arts degree, I’m given all sorts of skills and life tools that could apply to many different life trajectories, even if I don’t stay within the degree that gave me those tools initially. I have a former student who was a brilliant jazz saxophone player and now is an incredible nurse, and it’s well known that, in the nursing field, people with musical backgrounds are sought out and actually encouraged to become nurses because of the skills they’ve developed as communicative, improvisational, and social musicians.

Martin Center: How do you see the UNC System balancing the dual mission of liberal-arts education and professional training over the next decade?

Toby King: Well, I’m happy to say it’s a continuation. The University of North Carolina, for decades and decades, has had a balanced approach to education that involves both career training and a broad curriculum that involves science and the liberal arts and the social sciences. So we don’t need to start this from scratch. What we need to do is continue what we’re already doing. One of the joys of this study was reaching out to all the campuses to find out what they’re doing to encourage knowledge about the liberal arts already. And it turned out that that was a very easy “ask.” Sometimes, you send out a poll and you get no responses. Well, a wealth of suggestions came in. A wealth of activity already underway came back and was reported to us through the survey. We’re just getting started on that, and I don’t think we need to reinvent the wheel in order to convince our many stakeholders of the value of this project.

There have been a couple of recent times during some program curtailment when people across the spectrum have been disappointed to find out, “Oh, wait a minute, we’re not going to have a philosophy department at this school anymore. This seems weird, and we don’t like this.” And you can get broad agreement on so many of these things: the teaching of the classics, quote, unquote, right? I mean, I teach Beethoven. Currently, I’m teaching a class that involves Bach and Beethoven. I would hate to see these things disappear. These are some of, in some people’s conceptions, the best that has been thought and said by humans. So I think you can get buy-in on that very easily. You can take into account the momentum that’s already happening, and you can get many stakeholders to align in this mission.

I think it’s easy to imagine students in a STEM field taking advantage of a liberal-arts perspective to channel their enthusiasm. I myself teach a class in which students learn to use computer-aided design software and build their own electric guitar, and assemble the thing on their own with our guidance, and learn about the theories behind the sounds and the electronics and the music theory that they’re putting into play with these electric guitars. So it puts the technology into a human context. At the same time, giving students across disciplines an interest in technology, I think, is important, too. I mean, just imagine if Leonardo da Vinci could instantly have 3-D printed his flying machines instead of just drawing them on paper: a deep humanist who’s able to envision creative technologies and put them into play instantly using AI. I think the cross-pollination across these fields is its own argument for balance.

“It’s easy to imagine students in a STEM field taking advantage of a liberal-arts perspective to channel their enthusiasm.” Martin Center: Do you expect AI to have an impact on the popularity of the liberal arts on campus?

Toby King: I do. AI, at its best, allows us to channel our imaginations in exciting and innovative ways. The metaphor that Steve Jobs used is a computer as a bicycle for the mind. And I kind of feel like AI is a spaceship for the mind, allowing us to go in bold new directions that are very exciting. And that’s limited only by the imagination that we have that’s engendered through studies in the liberal arts and sciences. If we want to ensure that our youngest members of society are going to use AI in a way that improves society, we want to make sure they’re able to communicate across boundaries, across borders, across disciplines, across campus, and across communities. A liberal-arts education is one of the best ways to do that.

“The study of the social sciences, the humanities, and the arts is a way that we can keep the humanity embedded in our AI activities.” Martin Center: Do you think there’s going to be any downside to AI technology in the creativity of these majors and professions?

Toby King: I think the major danger in AI is the same danger when you put the pedal to the metal on your car and just keep going faster. I mean, that seems like a great idea until you lose control. So I think that’s field-agnostic. I think that it will have—if there are going to be negative effects, they will be universal. And the study of the social sciences, the humanities, and the arts is a way that we can keep the humanity embedded in our AI activities.

Martin Center: What strategies do you recommend for demonstrating the tangible career benefits of a liberal-arts education to parents who prioritize return on investment?

Toby King: Great question. As part of our study, along with the liberal-arts-focused activity that all of our campuses are already engaged in, we also have the beginnings of a collection: some actual narratives of students who have actually graduated with liberal-arts degrees and the trajectories that their lives have taken them on. Storytelling is such a powerful tool. And I think we can say to students and parents, “Look at this person with a music degree, look what a fine job they’re doing as a nurse practitioner, in terms of having civic engagement and generosity of spirit and a meaningful career. The humanities, our liberal-arts-based degree, is one of the primary reasons they’re able to do this.”

So the appendix that we’re currently generating will have many of those stories that go into various degrees of depth: ones that are almost baseball-card style and then ones that are more like small biographies. So you’ll be able to dip into this collection of real-life student stories that allow for the possibilities of creative life and a fulfilling life trajectory without needing to rely solely on a number like initial income.

Martin Center: How do we reach students who are skeptical about the liberal arts, especially those primarily focused on job outcomes?

Toby King: One of the main values of a liberal-arts-based education is that it takes a student’s natural inclinations and enthusiasms and channels them into larger ideas and larger intellectual frameworks. So you can come [to college] being a big fan of comic books, or you can come to UNC being a virtuoso at Minecraft, and I can tell you how that falls into the world of epic verse, of the great works of Shakespeare, of the shared world-building that happens in history or anthropology courses [where] we channel that natural enthusiasm into socially meaningful research and action. So that allows a student to take what they’re naturally interested in and turn it into a meaningful career and a meaningful life. If you’re not interested in what you’re doing, you’re not going to want to work hard at it, and it will, in the long term, be a failure. So it’s a way of reframing a student’s natural enthusiasms in a way that will make them want to engage with society in a remunerative way, both financially and in terms of other life values.

Martin Center: What do you hope policymakers take away from this report?

Toby King: That reducing the value of a college education, and specifically a liberal-arts-and-humanities-based education, to a single return-on-investment digit will result in a systematic under-investment in the values of a college education. It will be wasting much of the good work that is already underway, and it will be curtailing much good work that is yet to come.

“We need to have these relationships that the liberal arts and humanities engender.” Martin Center: What is the main point you want all North Carolinians and university stakeholders to take away from your report?

Toby King: We want to teach our young people to channel their natural enthusiasms and curiosities into socially engaged and responsible skills and thinking patterns for all of our mutual benefit across all spectrums. We need to have these relationships that the liberal arts and humanities engender. We need to have all these relationships helping each other. I truly believe this is a team effort and that it takes a combination of humanities, social sciences, and sciences, all mutually cross-pollinating.

Martin Center: Is there anything else you want to say about your report?

Toby King: Yes, the work continues. It’s very exciting, and everyone I’ve spoken to about it is very enthusiastic across the board. It’s been just wonderful work, very inspiring, very exciting. And I’m grateful to President Hans for asking us to start and am eager to continue.

Reagan Allen is the North Carolina reporter for the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.