One idea that elite universities like Yale, sprawling public systems like Wisconsin and smaller private colleges like Lewis and Clark have shared for generations is that a traditional liberal arts education is, by definition, not intended to prepare students for a specific vocation, writes Patricia Cohen in The New York Times. Rather, the critical thinking, civic and historical knowledge and ethical reasoning that the humanities develop have a different purpose: they are prerequisites for personal growth and participation in a free democracy, regardless of career choice. But in this new era of lengthening unemployment lines and shrinking university endowments, questions about the importance of the humanities in a complex and technologically demanding world have taken on new urgency.
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Source: University World News, Issue No: 0065 01 March 2009
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