Because it makes you smarter than similar coursework in “business, education, social work, and communications”:

Students majoring in liberal arts fields see “significantly higher gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills over time than students in other fields of study.” Students majoring in business, education, social work and communications showed the smallest gains. (The authors note that this could be more a reflection of more-demanding reading and writing assignments, on average, in the liberal arts courses than of the substance of the material.)

This article reports on the findings of a brand new book, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, where two highly respected sociologists studied how much students learn in college. The findings show that many students simply fail to learn anything of much significance in college, but that liberal arts majors show the greatest gains. And this jives with what I’ve heard from local businesses, who prefer to hire liberal arts majors because they can think and communicate, and adapt quickly to new expectations. I wonder whether that’s becoming a trend on a larger level, nationally and whatnot?

(Now, the one or two of you who used to read this blog might complain that I haven’t updated in two months. And you’d be right–I didn’t just fumble, I dropped that ball and kicked it right into the hands of the other team. I had a lot on my plate and simply failed to keep up here. But expect new things more frequently.)

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