The Death of Liberal Arts
How the recession and unemployment are making schools and students rethink the value of an education in the humanities.
After the endowment of Centenary College in Shreveport, La., fell by 20 percent from 2007 to 2009, the private school decided to eliminate half of its 44 majors. Over the next three to four years, classic humanities specialities like Latin, German studies, and performing arts will be phased out. It's quite a change from 2007, when NEWSWEEK labeled Centenary the "hottest liberal-arts school you never heard of," extolling its wide range of academics. In their place, the school is considering adding several graduate programs, such as master's degrees in teaching and international business. Such professional programs have proven increasingly popular and profitable at other universities and colleges, especially during economic downturns, a point that the college president tries to downplay. "We're not intentionally trying to chase markets," says David Rowe. "We think the students need to have a grounding in the arts and sciences, but they also probably need some training in a specific area."
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Nancy Cook is a staff writer for Newsweek and Newsweek.com, covering business and economics. In 2010, she and a team of two editors won the New York Press Club Award for Best Business Reporting on the Internet for their seven-month multimedia project called “Jobbed: How America Works Now,” which examined the future of work, careers and the labor market as the country emerged from the recession.
Cook has written about the way the stimulus money affected a single neighborhood to luxury retailers thrilled by record Wall Street bonuses to accounts of rank-and-file employees whose careers were turned upside down by Lehman Brothers’ collapse. She also has reported on politics and economic policy for Newsweek.com’s national affairs blog, focusing on the intersection between Washington D.C. and Wall Street.
Prior to coming to Newsweek, she worked as a producer on the 2008 presidential campaign at National Public Radio and as an on-air reporter for WRNI, the Rhode Island NPR affiliate. There, her enterprise and feature reporting on a lackluster urban school system and a federal lawsuit against the state child welfare agency earned her two regional Associated Press awards. She graduated from Carleton College and Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, where she now teaches as an adjunct professor.
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