The liberal arts major is often lampooned: lacking in "skills,"
unqualified for a professional career, underemployed. But studying for
the joy of learning turns out to be surprisingly practical. Unlike
career-focused education, liberal education prepares graduates for
anything and everything-and nervous "fuzzy major" students, their even
more nervous parents, college career center professionals, and
prospective employers would do well to embrace liberal arts majors. Just
look to Silicon Valley, of all places, to see that liberal arts majors
can succeed not in spite of, but because of, their education.
A Practical Education investigates the real-world experiences of
graduates with humanities majors, the majors that would seem the least
employable in Silicon Valley's engineering-centric workplaces. Drawing
on the experiences of Stanford University graduates and using the
students' own accounts of their education, job searches, and first work
experiences, Randall Stross provides heartening demonstrations of how
multi-capable liberal arts graduates are. When given a first
opportunity, these majors thrive in work roles that no one would have
predicted.
Stross also weaves the students' stories with the history of Stanford,
the rise of professional schools, the longstanding contention between
engineering and the liberal arts, the birth of occupational testing, and
the popularity of computer science education to trace the evolution in
thinking about how to prepare students for professional futures. His
unique blend of present and past produces a provocative exploration of
how best to utilize the undergraduate years.
At a time when institutions of higher learning are increasingly called
on to justify the tangible merits of the liberal arts, A Practical
Education reminds readers that the most useful training for an
unknowable future is the universal, time-tested preparation of a liberal
education.
