As more students are choosing to pursue higher education at liberal arts universities, there comes a debate of whether or not they will actually be able to face the working world with their degrees. The 21st century liberal arts education primarily focuses on the empowerment and preparation of students through multidisciplinary fields of education. At its core, the purpose is to expose students to diverse areas of knowledge, while giving them an opportunity to engage in an in-depth study of a specific area by picking a major. Many argue that receiving this type of education prevents students from becoming experts in a certain field. That, however, is not what the new century is all about.

Liberal arts education is not a new phenomenon. In fact, it dates back to the classical era of Greece and Rome where being educated gave you the freedom of thought and action. Aristotle’s writings, for instance, spanned about as much information as all the majors in this university tackle, if not even more. He wrote about justice, politics, biology, mathematics, dance, theater: you name it. Being a successful thinker at the time meant that you were able to think and write about a variety of disciplines. Being an expert in only one of them, however, prevented you from freely engaging with the other thinkers and restricted your intellectual scope.

After years of championing excellence in a single field as a mark of intelligence, the 21st century seems to be reviving the Aristotelian era.

One of the biggest arguments against the liberal arts paradigm is its supposed “fragmentation of knowledge” or its inadequate integration of information from different fields of knowledge into a coherent and nuanced understanding. The argument stems from the idea that exposing people to so many different fields distorts their attention and focus. However, fragmentation of knowledge is not necessarily a result of liberal arts education. Rather, it stems from the inability to properly synthesize and deeply analyze information: something liberal arts students excel at.

It is difficult to ask an 18-year-old in their first year of university to determine what they want to specialize in for the rest of their lives. Moreover, they should not have to make such a choice at this time in first place. The four years of college in a liberal arts system are meant to help students explore themselves and what they are interested in, rather than putting them on a single rigid track. The gift of such an education is the opportunity to diversify your skill set and expand your scope of thinking, such that when you graduate, you have the opportunity to decide what you want to specialize and do so in graduate school.

According to the Washington Post, only 27% of college graduates have a job related to their major. This statistic must be absolutely devastating to a person who graduated college with only an in depth understanding of one major. The beauty of a liberal arts education is that you can navigate your career path based on some of the courses and skills you acquired over your four years of college, no matter how unrelated to your major they were. If you have the skills required to become a decent writer, nothing is stopping you from landing a job as a journalist, even though you studied Economics at university.

Employers are now looking for people who know how to properly play the game. Admittedly, you cannot become an engineer without having studied all the necessary information that allows you to become one, but that should not stop you from being familiar with the world around you or how other disciplines work and integrate that knowledge into engineering. Excelling as a well-rounded engineer with as much knowledge of the world as the technical job itself would be ideal.

As a generation that is constantly striving for change and innovation, whether that change is through a new iPhone or a different job, it is much more convenient to be prepared for the possibility of a radical career change. Liberal arts education gives you the luxury of choosing what you want to do and prepares you for these spontaneous career shifts.