Are the days of the liberal arts education numbered?

It would be easy for me to bury my head in the sand and ignore this item from the Boston Globe yesterday, which cited a Wall Street Journal survey that found that employment recruiters are ignoring the Ivies and instead favoring large public universities in deciding where to do their undergraduate hiring.

Employment recruiters say that public universities are producing the most prepared and well-rounded prospects for entry-level jobs, with better life skills to fit in to their corporate cultures and prosper...

While critical thinking and the intellect of Ivy Leaguers are appreciated, recruiters are looking for practical skills for new product developers, operations managers, engineers, and business analysts.

The Journal article notes that budgetary concerns--especially since the economic downturn--also play a role. For larger companies with broad-based hiring needs, it is simply more economically efficient to visit fewer schools and develop deeper relationships than to attempt to cherry-pick students from top schools around the country. According to the Journal,

The impact on students is significant. Steve Canale, head of General Electric Co.'s recruiting efforts, said it is critical for prospective students to ask which companies recruit on campus before deciding where to matriculate. GE, for example, focuses on about 40 key schools—many of them state schools—to hire 2,200 summer interns; upwards of 80% of its new-graduate hires come from its internship pool, said Mr. Canale.

The implication for smaller liberal arts colleges--and the students who choose them--is fairly clear. I personally remain a strong believer in the liberal arts approach, but I recognize that it puts graduates at an initial disadvantage in the workplace. Companies know this, and respond accordingly in their entry-level hiring practices. Liberal arts students will often need to make up for their lack of vocational training somewhere, and relatively few companies are willing to provide that service for them. As a result, more liberal arts graduates choose (or are forced) to go to graduate school to round out their skill sets.

Claudia Goldin, a Harvard economics professor and lead researcher on a study tracking Harvard graduates' career paths, said, "We have none of the basic bread-and-butter courses that serve you well in much of industry." What's more, Ms. Goldin said, at Harvard, more than 55% of graduates went on to a doctorate degree, according to a recent survey, so they tend to stay in a first job for a short period of time—often a year or less.

As corporate recruiters have wielded ever more influence at our nation's universities, I wonder whether Ivies like Harvard and Yale and smaller liberal arts schools like Williams and Amherst will be forced to reconsider their traditional rejection of vocational training. With the job market remaining challenging for college graduates, it will be increasingly difficult for students to choose a school at which fewer employers recruit. Though the liberal arts focus does indeed pay dividends over the long run, as liberal arts graduates typically perform very well over their entire careers, the entry-level hurdle is a large one for students to overcome.

Of course, the alternative is for graduates of liberal arts colleges to simply eschew the traditional large-company career paths and strike off to start their own businesses. But without the vocational training necessary to succeed on one's own, it is a risk that few of today's graduates are likely to take. It will be interesting to see who blinks first in the coming years.


[Boston Globe]
[Wall Street Journal]