Liberal arts educations valuable outside school

I estimate that my existence this year will cost no less that $22,254.

That’s shelter, food,… I estimate that my existence this year will cost no less that $22,254.

That’s shelter, food, miscellaneous supplies and — by far the most expensive — tuition. I pay a whopping $15,272 to learn how to think.

Such a huge chunk of money warrants some heavy consideration of the question: What exactly do I, along with thousands of other students, think I’m doing spending that much money on a liberal arts degree?

Four years here might bury some of my friends in loans and pick clean some of their parents’ pocketbooks, and not all of them will graduate and find a six-figure job. But I still believe in a liberal arts education.

You’ve likely heard the argument that a liberal arts education teaches you how to think, and it does. In this increasingly tech-savvy world where one can find out James Madison’s demeaning nickname — Little Jemmy — and his height — in the range of 5-foot-2 to 5-foot-6 — in a matter of seconds, fact memorization isn’t so important. What is important is the ability to understand those facts, synthesize them and put them into context with the rest of the world.

Perhaps everyone has told you that you’re here to learn how to think, but here’s the second part of that: why it’s so important to learn how to think.

First, it keeps your brain in shape for creative thinking. Ellis Paul Torrance, the “Father of Creativity,” tested children in the ’50s and ’60s using what’s known as the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. According to his data, creativity quotient (CQ) was a better predictor for creative accomplishments in adulthood than intelligence quotient (IQ).

When you’re very young and you learn something, your brain develops many important neuron routes in which information can travel. This results in incredibly crucial lifelong skills, such as language acquisition.

And believe it or not, this relates to why your liberal arts education — presumably a continuation of the kind of varied education you’ve had most of your life — is important. When you don’t use neurons developed for a specific purpose, like playing an instrument, those neurons die and it’s much more difficult to form those pathways in adulthood.

A liberal arts education affords you the opportunity to develop a specific skill set, while still utilizing those important neurons you’ve created and exercised since childhood. So while you’re busy earning that degree in biology, your foreign-language requirement keeps your Spanish up to par. Hypothetically, when you want to do fieldwork in the Dominican Republic, you’ll have the skill-set combination necessary.

Neurons and technical jargon aside, this all factors into your creativity. The more information you obtain and retain, the more you’re able to draw connections between seemingly unrelated topics and come up with new ideas. By forcing your brain to work on several planes, you essentially keep it well-rounded and capable of creative thought.

That, more than many other qualities, will help later on.

Right now, you might be majoring in one field, but you could seamlessly slip into another after graduation. An article by Bloomberg Businessweek said that companies like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup hire a significant portion of their new employees with majors like psychology and English.

The article explained that the thinking is that people with a passion for knowledge and a keen ability to learn will fare just as successfully in business as business majors will. And the companies say that they generally find that to be true. Business majors initially have an advantage, but the liberal arts majors catch up quickly, and after six months it’s difficult to see a difference.Employability is a huge factor in the amount of money most people are willing to put into their educations. Fortunately, many liberal arts majors see a return on that investment when they enter into a variety of fields where aspects of their collective skill sets — like math — could come in handy.

But once a liberal arts major is in a comfortable job and endowed with an impressive set of abilities, the creativity and manner of thinking really come into play. This is particularly relevant when considering the 80-20 rule, or Pareto Principle.

Business majors, in all likelihood, have heard of this rule, which states that 20 percent of input creates 80 percent of output. For example, 20 percent of buyers are making 80 percent of the purchases.

So how does this factor into being able to think like a liberal arts student?

Well, if we use that rule and apply it, we can assume that 20 percent of the people are the movers and shakers, propelling the other 80 percent of the people, who are followers, forward.

The people who are coming up with the ideas are likely those with a varied skill set, intelligence and a highly creative thought process. And that’s exactly the kind of person a liberal arts education is intended to produce — one who can lead and thrive in various environments.

Whether you agree with these assessments or not is up to you. But it should be noted that, as an English writing and anthropology major, I’ve included examples from psychology, neuroscience and business in this column to make my point — a hallmark of the thinking that comes from a liberal arts education.

So I think my $22,254 existence this year is a worthwhile investment.