There might be a new twist in the future when answering the age-old ice breaker, ""What's your major?""
""Liberal studies.""
""What? Is that a major?""
According to University of Wisconsin-Madison officials, it could be. Recent discussions show that the College of Letters and Science is thinking about establishing a new liberal studies major. This looks exactly like a fervent follow-up of the Year of Humanities. However, how much the school's proposal could benefit students is highly doubtful.
All arguments for a liberal studies major boil down to an expansion of horizon. There are science students who have zero clue about what's going on in the news, and also humanities junkies who panic at the mere mention of Excel. A liberal education major could help solve a few individual cases. But it is certainly not the only way, not even one of the best ways to change the general picture.
A realistic question facing such a major is how to strike a balance between depth and width. When you take 40 courses in 20 areas, I wonder whether you can achieve proper creative thinking and troubleshooting skills. A basket of introductory-level classes does nothing beyond spurring initial interests and clarifying common sense. A college education without any focus would lose its purpose.
So how about some concentration on a couple of areas while maintaining a liberal arts breadth? That sounds fine. But don't we already have such choices? You can graduate after meeting the requirements of your majors and liberal studies. At UW-Madison, the general education requirements have six parts: communication, quantitative reasoning, natural science, humanities/literature/arts, social studies and ethnic studies. These requirements all together add up to a minimum of 22 and a maximum of 30 credits. In comparison, you need around 30 credits to graduate with a major. So we can almost claim that every UW student graduates with at least two majors: the specialization and the liberal studies. Why bother setting up a separate major when current options would suffice?
School officials maintain that some students may not find their ideal major among available programs. Well, isn't that something we all experience during our first two years in college? Even if you still don't know which area to set foot in, there's an amazing Plan B for students who really want something unique. Many sizable universities, including UW, allow students to design their own majors with the help of advisors. The fact that we take lots of liberal studies courses doesn't mean we want a major that lumps them all together.
Besides setting up a new major, many other approaches can improve the picture of liberal education more sustainably. For UW, one possibility is raising the general education requirement. The University of Minnesota currently has a three-part liberal education requirement. Specific requirements under the branches range from regular social sciences to designated themes like international perspectives, all adding up to 36 credits or more. An increase in required courses not only allows for more shopping time on the academic catalog, but it also extends the breadth of undergraduate education.
A liberal studies certificate could also achieve what the new major is intending to reach, but in a more flexible way. It would help to encourage students to try more liberal arts offerings on campus without getting burdened by another 30 credits.
Besides the breadth, another defining feature of liberal studies education is its depth. It can hardly be achieved by PowerPoint presentations in a cafeteria-sized lecture hall. Instead, a higher faculty-student ratio has proved effective in fostering involvement and creativity. Thus, shrinking average class sizes and offering more course options may achieve the end goal much better. This might be the last thing UW can afford to do. But it's also the ultimate path to a prosperous liberal education.
The question facing UW is not whether to add a new liberal arts major, but how to make its current liberal studies offerings more appealing to both the students and the market. With the diminishing faculty-student ratio and students' whining about limited course options, there's much more to be done before we hit new territories.
Qi Gu is a junior majoring in journalism. Please send all responses to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
