Liberal Arts in a Financially-Driven World

"As Professor Kagan noted, we no longer live in a world driven by the inculcation of values, nor by the quest of pure knowledge. Rather, we, as a society, understand freedom in a financial sense. In that way, liberal arts institutions do indeed promote freedom for their students – in that its students are free to make money in whatever way they choose. At St. Olaf, evidence of this abounds."

Professor Donald Kagan argues that a liberal arts education has, at its core, always been meant to establish a true and real freedom within the learner. This freedom has allowed those with liberal arts educations to be legitimate leaders in whatever society they belong to. The shape that this freedom takes, however, has changed throughout time, so much that today, the liberal arts have perhaps renounced its societal leadership and instead opted to submit to preexisting norms.

As Professor Kagan noted, we no longer live in a world driven by the inculcation of values, nor by the quest of pure knowledge. Rather, we, as a society, understand freedom in a financial sense. In that way, liberal arts institutions do indeed promote freedom for their students – in that its students are free to make money in whatever way they choose. At St. Olaf, evidence of this abounds. There seems to be less funding every year for programs advocating human empathy and action, like the St. Stephen’s “Day in the Life.” Even programs like Leaders for Social Change, from which we've all benefited, and Academic Civic Engagement courses face the potentiality of getting cut each year. Additionally, with the change of the Center for Experiential Learning to the Piper Center for Vocation and Career, we've seen less of a focus on civic engagement and an increasing emphasis on programs pushing careers like business and law.

It’s not that some of these changes are necessarily bad. St. Olaf functions through donations from its alumni, and by opening doors for students to enter fields where they are relatively free to achieve economic affluence, it can, in many ways, continue educating youth. However, as these changes keep occurring at St. Olaf and other liberal arts institutions, we must realize that we are losing our potential for the “freedom” that Professor Kagan identified and that past liberal arts institutions advocated for, and we are instead pursuing a freedom congruent with that which society has already defined. We are no longer forging ahead as leaders but being complacent with the norms society has set.