Is a liberal arts education worth it?

Student debt in the U.S. has risen dramatically in the last few decades, while recent college graduates are having a harder time finding work. For the last five years, the unemployment rate of college graduates is above the national average, and students graduate with an average of $40,000 in debt. Meanwhile, students with degrees in technology or finance might find they are facing a work landscape transformed by artificial intelligence. But what about a liberal arts degree?

We sit down with students, faculty and administrators from Linfield University and Lewis & Clark College to ask whether a liberal arts degree is still worth it.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller, coming to you today in front of an audience at Linfield University in McMinnville.

[Audience applause]

Based on recent headlines, why would anyone want to go to college? Students are now graduating with an average of $40,000 of debt. Paying that debt off is getting harder and harder. The unemployment rate of college graduates is now above the national average. Many graduates who do have jobs have found work that doesn’t even require or draw upon their college degrees. And it seems that labor markets haven’t yet experienced the biggest shock waves from the AI explosion.

So what’s it like to be a college student now, or a college professor, or a university president? What’s the purpose of a liberal arts education? We’re gonna dig into these questions today. We have an audience of students and faculty from Linfield University and Lewis & Clark College. We’ll hear from them throughout the hour.

Joining me now are Mark Blegen and Sarah Warren. Mark Blegen is the president of Linfield University. Sarah Warren is an associate professor of sociology at Lewis & Clark College, where she is also a new title, the executive director of community partnerships. It’s great to have both of you on the show.

Mark Blegen: Thank you.

Sarah Warren: Yeah, thank you.

Miller: And Mark, you said I can call you by your first name, thanks for having us at your university.

Blegen: Yeah, thanks for being here.

Miller: So let me start with you. What does the phrase “liberal arts” mean to you?

Blegen: Liberal arts means, to me, breadth and depth. What it does at Linfield, it gets you out of your discipline and gives you critical thinking skills, gives you exposure and adaptability to things you might not have experienced before.

Miller: Can you have both breadth and depth?

Blegen: I think you can. I’ll use my own example, as an undergraduate at a small private liberal arts institution, I think I changed majors seven times. Started off as history, psychology, ended up with sports medicine. I’ve taken exactly zero classes in being a college president. But that depth and that breadth allowed me to grow, experience things that I’ve never experienced before, develop lifelong learning. And that’s really the essence of the liberal arts.

Miller: Sarah, what about you? What does it mean to be in liberal arts now for your life?

Warren: Yeah, I would agree with everything that Mark said and also add to that liberal arts helps develop leaders, because it allows students to be able to really approach complex problems from a different set of perspectives and a wide knowledge set. I think, in our world, as problems become increasingly complex, being able to have that skillset that draws on a wide range of ideas and knowledge will be increasingly important.

Miller: As I mentioned, we have students here from Lewis & Clark and from Linfield. How did you all decide to go to a relatively small liberal arts school? Who wants to start? What’s your name?

Ash Richards: My name’s Ashley Richards, I go by Ash.

Miller: And where do you go?

Richards: I go to Linfield University.

Miller: And how did you decide to go to Linfield?

Richards: I applied to a lot of other schools that were much, much bigger. But I’m the type of person that loves asking questions to professors. And I figured going to a larger school wouldn’t allow me the opportunity to actually talk to my professors, rather than like a TA or other students.

Miller: Has that proven to be the case?

Richards: It has proven to be the case. You can ask anyone in my classes, I’m asking so many questions all of the time.

Miller: You are the first person to raise your hand when I asked a question, so I applaud you for that.

Just before we went live, I asked what years all of you were, and you said, “I’m a senior … well, sort of. I’m a junior, but I’m about to graduate.” So you’re doing this in three years?

Richards: Well, about three-and-a-half. I’ll be going studying abroad in Japan next term and then I finish early because I ran out of classes to take.

Miller: So that’s it. You’re done with classes?

Richards: Yeah, after the fall.

Miller: Fiona Eilers is here in our audience as well, a senior at Lewis & Clark majoring in political science. I also understand you transferred to Lewis & Clark from PSU. Why?

Fiona Eilers: Well, when I was at Portland State, the class sizes were just a lot bigger and I felt like it was a lot more difficult to really form connections with the professors, and also, I think to network within the field that I was looking for. I was looking to go into politics or international affairs, or something within that sphere. I find that at a smaller institution, you’re able to make much more personal connections with professors and with alumni, and that can really translate into future career opportunities I found.

Miller: So that that was your hope in transferring, and it seems like you’re saying that actually that came true?

Eilers: Yeah, it’s been pretty great. I’ve gotten a lot of like career connections. I’m gonna do an internship in DC this summer. Pretty much the only reason I got it is from an alumni connection – well, not the only reason. But what helped me get my foot in the door is talking to people who had those experiences, who are from my college. And I think that I wouldn’t have been able to reach out to them so easily or make that connection so easily if I didn’t go to a smaller liberal arts college.

Miller: One of your classmates is nodding right next to you. Evelyn Gore is here, also a senior at Lewis & Clark, double majoring, I understand, in theater, and biochemistry and molecular biology. How did you come up with that pairing?

Evelyn Gore: Well, I’ve been interested in these two very distinct fields all of my life. I was born on a stage, I like to say, and I’ve loved theater all of my life. And then I started taking science classes and I was like, “This is really awesome!” Very theatrical, I know. [Laughs]

I simply could not pick one or the other. And going to a bigger school, for example, University of Oregon, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to major in both of these entirely distinct fields at the same time. So at this small school, I’m able to get that depth of really understanding performance and acting, while also getting the depth in biochemistry and molecular biology at the same time.

Miller: Are there ways in which they interact, those two majors? Not literally, but in the way you are approaching them or thinking about them in your life, in your studies?

Gore: They totally do. I did a thesis research project on this exact thing, because I was walking from organic chemistry lab to the Black Box theater for rehearsal, and I was thinking, “How does my acting perspective inform my scientific brain?” And I have come up with that theater has this sort of unique liveness and human quality to it that science sometimes lacks, honestly. Getting to approach science and that like human-centered approach, especially thinking about medicine too, that human-centered care is very important. And that’s how I found the interaction.

Miller: We asked folks on Facebook some of the same questions.

Mary Potter wrote: “As an English major employed at a workplace dominated by STEM degrees, I observed how overlooking the liberal arts hindered the effectiveness of the agency. We need a balance of both in the future.”

Katherine Sherman wrote: “A well-rounded education is always an excellent idea. The problem is those who hold the degrees are free thinkers and they’re considered dangerous, so they have more trouble getting jobs now that employers want gullible robots.”

From the professors here – and maybe Sarah I’ll start with you, but if other folks in the audience wanna think about this as she’s answering – I’m curious if you’ve had conversations with students who’ve questioned, in recent years, the value of a liberal arts degree?

Warren: I think there’s a lot of financial pressure on students and young people in the moment. When I really talked to students and sat down with them, many of them have had the experiences that these students who’ve just spoken have had, of feeling like they are in this small setting of a classroom, able to really get into ideas and material in a deep way, in connection with their classmates, in connection with their professors. And one thing that we’ve really thought about a lot at Lewis & Clark is how do you take that learning, and help students see the value of it for future careers too?

So we recently started a career accelerator, in which students are gaining access to high impact learning practices. So sometimes that might be internships, it could be access to research with professors in their labs, in their fieldwork, or it could be overseas experiences. We’ve really found that when you start to talk to students and help them understand the ways that the things they’re learning in the classroom are applicable to such a wide range of work through these high impact learning practices, that they really start to see the value of this. And they go on and do amazing work that draws from their education or their internships and they’re able to take that out into the world.

Miller: I feel like I’ve heard versions of the arguments that you’re making for my whole conscious life. The line I remember is, a good liberal arts education, it doesn’t just teach you, or even primarily teach you, what to think. It teaches you how to think. I remember hearing that in the mid-’90s when I was getting ready to go to college.

But since that time, there have been seismic societal shifts largely brought on by technology – maybe at least three of them. First, the Internet itself, and then social media, and now AI. Does it make sense that the same argument still holds, the same argument for liberal arts education remains consistent as society changes so much? Is that a problem? Or is that just a sign that the liberal arts philosophy works?

Blegen: I think it’s a sign that the liberal arts philosophy works. Content is everywhere these days, right? So we need to teach students how to think, and how to adapt, and how to grow, and how to mold. You can get content on YouTube and that content’s always gonna be there. But if we can teach people how to think and critically think, that’s incredibly important.

And one other piece on that last question: a lot of people don’t get a liberal arts degree because you’re gonna work at Starbucks. What can you do with that degree? If you look at the earnings premium of college graduates, the average earnings premium for a college graduate is about $800,000. You’ll earn $800,000 more in your lifetime than if you didn’t go to college. At Linfield, it’s $1.3 million. So whatever we’re teaching here – and I’m not sure Lewis and Clark is – there’s a solid return on investment for getting an undergraduate degree.

Miller: That does remind me of another comment we got online. Tim Irvin wrote: “One problem with our culture is that we only view ‘value’ in terms of how it impacts earning potential.”

Now, I should say that you were talking about other values before, but when you talk about earning potential, does that take into account people who can’t find those jobs, who say, “I got my bachelor’s degree, and indeed, I really am now a barista?”

Blegen: The data that we’ve looked at is an average. I’m sure it takes that into account, correct.

Miller: But it also includes the folks who are working in finance and potentially with enormous salaries skewing, in some ways.

I’m curious among the faculty here, what have you been hearing from your students about how they’re thinking about these very basic questions? We can talk more as we go about other issues in school now and employment issues, but the basic question of the value of a liberal arts education.

We got a hand. What’s your name and what do you teach?

Catherine Reinke: My name is Catherine Reinke, and I teach in the biology department here at Linfield University. I’m a first gen college student.

Miller: Meaning, the first member of your family to go to college.

Reinke: Correct. So, as I’ve progressed in my career, when I started teaching, students really weren’t talking about return on investment, and now that is very common. Students come into my office, they want to know what happens next.

But I want to expand on the definition of liberal arts that we’ve introduced. So for me, the value of the liberal arts is in teaching not just breadth and depth, but how to ask questions and what those questions might be. I think of my own field of biology, the things that I teach as a professor didn’t exist when I was a graduate student. The questions have changed precisely because the technology has changed. So when you have technology changing, then you have new kinds of questions. And I think our students are well poised to tackle that environment because they know how to ask questions.

Miller: How do you think being a first-generation college graduate in your family has shaped the way you approach being a college professor?

Reinke: I love that question. I would say that most of my job doesn’t appear on my load sheet. It doesn’t appear on my Outlook calendar.

Miller: What’s a load sheet?

Reinke: So that’s the courses I’m teaching, how many credits I get for each course. What I get paid for, essentially, how we compare that across departments.

Most of what I do is talk to students all day long. It’s what I was doing an hour ago. I’m on sabbatical. I’m not teaching this semester. But talking to students, kind of giving them ideas and nudging them toward opportunities is what I do. And I think my perspective is, having been first gen, gives me a sense of how essential that is for some students. I stumbled into incredible opportunities because someone pulled me aside or someone said, “Hey, what are you doing this summer?” And I see the students nodding their heads, so I’m sure they have great stories about the nudges that they’ve gotten from their faculty.

Miller: I imagine also that those people who are nudging you saw something in you.

Reinke: We’ll never know. But it worked. [Laughter]

Miller: Or they also saw humility, perhaps.

We have another … What’s your name and what do you teach?

Enrique Washington: My name is Enrique Washington. I teach sport management and business, and I also have the pleasure of serving in the capacity of an internship coordinator and advisor. And my perspective is somewhat unique, because I spent 28 years of my professional journey working inside of companies helping those companies recruit people. So I have this lens of what they look for, what’s important.

As I think about my time here at Linfield – which has been coming up on one year – and the conversations I’m having with students about “why did you come to Linfield,” because they often ask me that, so I reciprocate by asking the same question...

Miller: I imagine some of them have been at Linfield longer than you have at this point.

Washington: Most of them have, yeah. But I think my point I want to make around this value of liberal arts and what I’m seeing, students saying they came here because of the ability to be a part of a community. And when you’re part of a community, you can be in a community when it’s much smaller and when it reciprocates with inviting people in. And the value of relationship building and making connections transcends into a job.

So as this internship advisor role I have now, I’m helping students understand from the place of how do you build relationships? How do you foster those relationships? That is a unique proposition that they get to have with building relationships with other students, faculty and staff, because they have access.

Miller: Those are what I think are sometimes called soft skills or human skills, as opposed to X plus Y equals Z, you’re saying how do you talk to people? How do you get them to wanna talk back? How do you listen to people?

Washington: Well, listening is a big part of it, but also how do you ask questions? How do you approach relationship building from a place of serving, asking others what can I do for you? Or what’s important to you? What are you excited about?

When I got my first job out of college, I had a sociology professor tell me … I never forgot this. I said I got this really cool job, I’m moving to Oregon. He said, “The next six jobs you get will come through relationships.” And he was 100% correct.

Miller: I wanna turn to artificial intelligence. If there’s one thing that has most upended aspects of society or made us question what the future is gonna be like, it is AI. So I wanna first start with students. How do you use AI these days as students?

We got a hand over here. What is your name and what is your role at Linfield?

Jacob MacFarland: So my name is Jacob MacFarland and I’m a student, a senior student studying environmental science and philosophy. I don’t use AI, period. I just don’t.

Miller: Why not?

MacFarland: Because I found that, oftentimes, it hallucinates. It does not tell you exactly what you need to know. And it goes off on weird tangents. It’s not reliable, it’s not reliable at all.

It’s a good study tool in some ways, I can totally see that. But also, I think of its environmental impact. It uses up water. The data centers are vicious in terms of gathering their property in order to build those data centers in the first place. And there’s also a large amount of oppression that the people in those communities face that are facing the AI data centers in those areas.

Miller: So a lot of reasons you just outlined for not using it. Do you feel like you’re in the majority among your classmates in terms of your stance?

MacFarland: No, I would say not. Those more environmentally inclined do realize the issues behind the use of it. Also, of course, the ethical reasons. I’m in like philosophy circles, and they’re very concerned about ethics of AI and such things like that. But also, the people in environmental circles are more concerned about their environmental impact.

So within my circles, it’s considered common. But outside of those circles, especially in consideration of business or computer science, there’s a lot more use of AI because of its efficiency. You maximize efficiency within those fields, especially through innovation and technology.

It’s natural, I would say, to have that be so popular within those circles. But within mine, not at all.

Miller: With that as the first response to this question, it may be harder for other folks to raise their hand and say, “Yes, here’s how I use it.” But nevertheless, who does want to talk about the ways that they do use AI right now?

[Silence]

OK, show of hands, is that because you don’t use it or you just don’t wanna talk right now?

You got your hand up. Let’s get a mic over to you. What’s your name?

Lawson Born: My name is Lawson Born.

Miller: And what year are you?

Born: I’m a freshman here at Linfield.

Miller: How is the freshman year going so far?

Born: It’s going good. Busy, really busy.

Miller: It’s busy, but not including AI?

Born: Not including AI, no.

Miller: I thought – and I’m an increasingly old man – that people your age, in the last couple of years, it’s become the water you swim in and that it’s been relatively common for teenagers or people in their early twenties to use it as one of the tools when they’re doing all kinds of jobs. Am I wrong about that?

Born: Oh, definitely not wrong. A ton of people probably do use it, yeah.

Miller: Why don’t you?

Born: I mean, in high school I used it a lot. But coming to college, I think there is a danger in offloading your ability to think to something else. I took a couple of classes here where we actually talked about that, and I was like, “I actually like thinking with my own brain.”

Miller: Are you just saying this because I’m here and the president of the university is here and there’s a bunch of professors? [Laughter] I’m serious! Because this is what I want someone to say, and you’re saying it, which then makes me question “Wait, why are you saying it?”

Born: No, this is what I believe. I mean, it’s nice that the president’s here. I get some brownie points, hopefully. [Laughter] But no, this is what I believe.

Blegen: I think, in the last five or so minutes, we just got a wonderful example of what the liberal arts are. We heard Evelyn talk about range, theater and biochemistry. You can come to a private liberal arts institution like Linfield or like Lewis & Clark and you can do both. You don’t have to pick. You can do all that. You can be on an athletic team. You can lead an organization.

You heard Catherine talk about relationships, right? I think most of us in this room are here because of relationships. Our faculty are probably, I know they’re at Lewis & Clark, and I know they’re at Linfield because they love to teach and develop those relationships.

And then we just heard wonderful reasoning skills on why some don’t use AI. So we’ve got range, relationships and reasoning, three really valuable things that you get from coming to a small, private liberal arts institution.

Miller: Sarah, as a professor, where do you see AI showing up, first of all, among the work your students are doing?

Warren: I think I have really tried, similarly to what these students have said, to talk about AI a lot in my classes and to be transparent about it. Like, what can AI do? What are the dangers in using it? I’ve created assignments where we ask AI to write an essay, then we critique the essay and really think about, what’s missing from this? Where are assumptions being made? What’s being overlooked in some of the arguments? So I think that helps students maybe see some of the patterns that show up in AI that are different than the way that we think. They don’t have the creativity or the ingenuity that individuals have in their thinking.

But it is also a temptation. I think sometimes it can be a temptation to use. So I think in my mind, as I’ve taught and tried to develop assignments and papers, it’s really been with a mind towards what kinds of things can help students think and maybe take away that temptation. So maybe we do oral presentations in class, or you do other ways of sharing your knowledge that then is really dependent on you doing the actual learning.

But I also feel like – just to echo what Mark was saying too – one of the things I think about with AI, and as we get worried about jobs with AI, is AI may take away some of these really technical skill-based jobs. But we still need people thinking about the ethics of the use of AI, the ethics of data, where does data come from? Who’s asking the questions, and which questions are getting asked and which are not getting asked? So I think that, again, is precisely where liberal arts are doing a really important job.

Miller: I’m curious from the faculty folks in the audience, are you too, like Sarah, crafting assignments or thinking about your syllabi in ways that are affected by AI? Are you asking different things of your students because of AI?

We see some nodding here. Who would like to take this on?

Julie Fitzwater: Hi, I’m Julie Fitzwater. I teach in the school of nursing here at Linfield. And we have definitely been integrating AI assignments so students can learn how to use it. In nursing, we are lifelong learners, and we use technology all the time and technology is always changing, so learning how to get a hold of it and use it the way you need it to be. Because you’re never gonna get rid of the human element in health care, we still need nurses who can talk to people, be part of great teams. You want me there with you at the end of life, not an AI voice. You want someone holding your hand.

So there’s always gonna be humanity in what we do. And we have to be talking about the ethics of how we use it, so students need to be having those conversations.

Miller: What about assessing students? We got a hand right there.

Reinke: In genetics, I give oral exams. I have a small enough class that I can have a conversation with students at the end of the semester and really gauge their learning. And the impetus for that is to prepare them for life in the workforce, when they’re really going to need to talk about the things that they know.

But I think also, the small size of a liberal arts college allows us to have really transparent conversations with our students. So I’d like to poke at what you guys are doing with AI, because there’s more to it than we’re hearing. But I’ve asked my genetics students and they’ll put the questions that I write as study questions for the week into AI. But then they print those out, they bring them to class and they say, “Catherine, what does this mean?” They’re savvy enough in their learning to realize that AI isn’t giving them what they need, and that’s where we can start a conversation, and that’s where the teaching and learning happens in the classroom.

Miller: Mark, I want to turn to what happens after college. According to the latest federal data, the unemployment rate for recent college graduates – that’s people ages 22 to 27 – is higher than the overall unemployment rate. That’s the reverse of what had been the case for many decades. I think it’s about five years ago when college graduates started having higher unemployment rates than the national average, and it’s stayed steady for the last five years. How do you make sense of this shift?

Blegen: That’s a great question. It is a tough job market right now for recent college graduates. My guess is – and I don’t know that data well – that people are staying in their careers for a longer period of time, so there’s less room for our graduates to end up in right out of college. But again, I think the liberal arts positions our students well, not only for that first job, but then for the next job in their career.

Miller: If they can get that first job, right? That’s the question. Does this weigh on you as a university president?

Blegen: It weighs heavily on me. The things that weigh heavily on my mind are getting students here to Linfield and creating access. But then what do they do when they leave? And we wanna create engaged alumni. We want those alumni to come back and share the relationships that have been described. But it’s something that keeps me up at night, making sure that not only do our students understand the value of their degree, but then employers understand the value of that Linfield degree as well.

Miller: Are you saying that you think that potential employers are not paying enough attention to college graduates?

Blegen: I think there’s a lot of noise out there right now for the question the value of higher education, whether it is the federal government and their approach, whether it’s that content being everywhere, whether it’s companies offering their own certificates. I think it dilutes the message of higher ed, and we need to get more articulate on that message.

Miller: I’m curious, for the students here, there’s another poll that I saw: four years ago, Gallup found that more than 70% of college graduates said it was a good time to find a quality job. Recently, only 19% said so.

I guess the basic question is how you feel about your job prospects right now? For the ones who have anywhere from a week or a month left before you graduate, which is a number of you, how are you feeling?

What’s your name and where are you from?

Elie: My name is Elie, and I’m a senior at Lewis & Clark, and I study biochemistry and molecular biology. I’m feeling OK. I’m not feeling very great about it, mainly because, as you mentioned, the jobs that I’ve been looking at do not require my degree, even within the specificity of something as specific as working a lab job, whether that’s in academia or in more of a health care setting. Both of them either require a more advanced degree, like a master’s or a PhD in whatever area you’re working in, or a high school degree and they will train you with their own certificates on the topic.

Miller: And you’re right between that.

Elie: Yes exactly. It adds a layer of, you’re overqualified for the jobs that you are able to do and you’re underqualified for all the other jobs, so you’re left in the middle.

Miller: There is more data about that, about the unemployment – I think I mentioned it in my intro. It’s defined by the federal government as graduates working in jobs that don’t require a college degree. Forty-three percent of recent college graduates now fit that description. So for the other seniors or pseudo seniors among you, how are you thinking about job prospects?

Richards: Well, just to reintroduce myself, I’m a double major in philosophy and public health, and I’m a minor in law rights and justice. So those are some very under-attack regions of the types of jobs that are out there right now.

But I do think that the opportunities that having the small liberal arts school experiences like given me has really filled my resume. So for that reason, I think that being involved in clubs and having a work-study job that’s sort of outside of the breadth of my education has really served me well. I’m really positive, especially after study abroad, that I’ll be able to get a job that I’m looking for.

Miller: It’s interesting that you mentioned majors as under attack. For years, I remember seeing people say, “English majors, philosophy majors, classic majors, you’re not gonna get a good job from that. If you want a good job, be a computer science major, learn how to code.” And then just in the last half year, year, two years, we’ve learned that certain versions of computer science and coding could be some of the earliest jobs to be just fully transformed or erased by artificial intelligence.

How do you young people now think about the majors you’re doing or what you’re studying, and the potential jobs that will exist or be erased, at a time when things are happening so quickly?

MacFarland: So I totally called this computer science thing, I saw it from like four or five years ago. My friends got into computer science, and they were telling me how it was the next big hustle, like they were ready to be rich and whatnot.

Miller: Hustle, like a good hustle.

MacFarland: Like they were going to get money from this. And I knew from the start it was not going to happen. It was a hunch at first, and I started seeing the signs with AI rising up and I’m like, “You’re going to be replaced in some degree.” There’s always a place for them …

Miller: So instead, you’re putting your money in philosophy.

MacFarland: I’m putting my money in philosophy and environmental science.

Miller: Why?

MacFarland: Because those are way more fulfilling to me than following the money. I don’t think the money has anything to do with it. I think liberal arts education as a whole, and education just as a whole period, is not valued in dollars, but rather knowledge and sense, and knowing what is and isn’t out there.

I didn’t know a lot of things that were and weren’t out there because I’m also a first-generation student, the first in my family to ever try to even go to college in the first place. And I started in community college. From there, branching out, I was able to get a lot of information and mainly relationships. I didn’t know a lot of people to ask and I didn’t have the resources to ask these questions.

So coming to college immediately granted me so many benefits, mainly from relationships. So that was one of the main things I was taking away from college. I have an advantage now, because instead of being stuck in janitorial jobs like my parents were for their entire lives, I can have a chance of being somewhere else.

Elie: I guess this also answers your question about AI from earlier about it being able to replace our jobs. I will say one thing that liberal arts taught me – and I think that’s been brought up a couple times already – is how to ask questions. And even when AI can do a task for you, you need someone to ask said question the right way in order to get the right output.

As someone who is in science, I have to read a lot of scientific papers. And you asked us how we use AI, and I will say I try not to. When I use it, I try to use it responsibly. I think that’s the best I can do. English is not my first language, so a lot of times, I will need help in syntactical corrections or grammatical things for writing …

Miller: I’ll just say that most people for whom English is a first language don’t even know the phrase “syntactical corrections,” so literally, you’re so far ahead of most native English speakers it’s breathtaking. But go on. [Laughter]

Elie: Thank you. But yeah, I have to read these really long 50-page papers about something really niche and science-y. And AI does save me a couple minutes doing that, right? But it’s knowing what to ask and it’s knowing how to ask those questions.

And another point is liberal arts taught me adaptability. That’s why I’m not as closed minded as some may be about AI, because I know that the future will include it and it’s something that is kind of inevitable. So I just try to inform my decisions from the lens of something like critical thinking and asking the right questions that I’ve been taught from my liberal arts education, to be able to utilize it the best way I can and not have it replace me.

Miller: I wanna go back to something we heard earlier from one of the faculty members here, that one of the shifts she has seen is that now students are asking her, early on, something that she never heard 20 years ago, which is, how is this gonna translate to a job or how will this help me get a job in the future? Is that something that you current students thought about when you started college?

Eilers: I’m a political science major and, yeah, that was something on my mind.

Miller: As a freshman?

Eilers: Yeah. I think it also depends on the culture. I was raised in Asian and Slavic households, so it’s very much like a degree is a financial investment. There also is the educational value, but there’s also an opportunity cost and a financial cost to going to college – especially for people who are first gen, especially for people who are coming in from immigrant families, people who have sacrificed a lot for you as a student to be here.

It’s definitely something that was on my mind and it’s, again, part of the reason why I chose Lewis & Clark, because politics is about connections. A lot of Lewis & Clark’s alumni are in politics. And I knew that the department was excellent educationally and I knew that, also, there were a lot of alumni that I could network with.

I think it’s a bit of a luxury to not have to consider career, in some respects. And so it definitely was something at the top of my mind when choosing a college.

Miller: I wanna turn to another big issue that is a reason that colleges and universities have become lightning rods. This is a longstanding issue, but it’s been a kind of crescendo in recent years, which is the criticism that they’re liberal echo chambers. And let’s start with our university president. Mark, how do you think about this charge?

Blegen: I think that a lot of times, the public at large gets “liberal” confused with “liberal arts.” They’re very different, right? And I do think higher ed needs to look inside quite a bit. And I think there has been some liberal echo chambers going on. We should be teaching diversity of thought. But the liberal arts does not mean “liberal.” It means teaching thinking and critical thinking skills.

Miller: I’ve seen various numbers of the percentage of faculty nationwide who identify as Democrats or progressives, versus Republicans or conservatives. It’s 3 to 1, 4 to 1, 8 to 1, different studies about different things. But it’s not just a misunderstanding of the word “liberal” in liberal arts. It is also various surveys showing a very skewed ratio of the political ideologies of faculty writ large.

Blegen: I don’t know if that’s a function of who chooses to be in higher ed. It’s probably more that. Creating these havens for thinking and thought, I think that attracts a certain person.

Miller: I guess, in the end, where this really becomes an issue for a lot of folks is the extent to which a campus is a place that’s welcome to intellectual openness and vigorous debate, the extent to which people who, say, have conservative views feel like they can talk about them openly.

Sarah, how do you think about this as a member of the campus community?

Warren: Yeah, I think it’s a great question. Something that feels like a really critical piece of a liberal arts education is to have a place where we can have constructive dialogue around really challenging issues, and where we can really value the different perspectives that people bring to the conversation and to the classroom setting. It can be challenging. I think it takes a lot of work to be able to facilitate conversations and to be able to have enough trust in a classroom setting where you can feel like people can bring in their different perspectives. And yet, it’s really rewarding at the end also, because people see things from a new perspective, they have empathy towards others that they may not have had before. That’s an important piece of this.

Miller: How do you all think about this, students and faculty, this question of the degree to which your campus feels like a place that welcomes political debate and unpopular positions? I see one hand up so far.

MacFarland: Immediately what comes to mind is like when you were saying unpopular positions – obviously it’s not conservative what I’m about to talk about – but I was originally coming into this university more on the side of a conservative lens. Which is interesting because I’m personally not conservative, but my family is quite conservative, at least on my mother’s side. So coming into this, I felt welcomed immediately. I never felt in hostile territory whatsoever.

I even took a class with a Marxist, the professor was more into the idea of Marxism. And I was like, “That’s really interesting, I want to know more about that.” So we were able to have conversations, and I ended up taking his classes and loving his classes to death. He even granted me into three other philosophy conferences across the country.

I think that this liberal arts institution is amazing at providing that kind of open access to communication that’s not hostile whatsoever, especially because coming from that lens, I felt comfortable with the exact opposite realm, Marxism versus general conservatism. I think it’s quite open, at least in my experience.

Eilers: I think being at a smaller school makes it a lot clearer when you don’t practice what you preach in terms of your values. Like, if you’re in a community of people who can see that you’re actively going to the library, reading up on things, are you researching actively? Are you using AI or are you not using AI? Are you speaking out against it? Then that holds you as a person more responsible for your own choices. So I think the responses that we’ve heard so far really speak to this, where we all have not an echo chamber of views, but a self-responsible view, where we each have personal responsibility for our actions, as you see in the outer world as well.

But I think that with the rise of the internet being so echo chamber-y, it’s way more of a distinction between the liberal arts experience and between the general public, because we are able to see and critically acclaim what we’re seeing on the internet and what we’re seeing from each other, because that’s the point. We can ask the questions to each other and to the world about what we’re actually seeing.

Elie: We also have to remember that higher ed in general, but also liberal arts colleges, are working in a bigger context of a country that now is not necessarily super welcoming to these ideas. So we need to remember that schools still get funding from governments that don’t necessarily want to hear certain things, so they play this game of trying to appease both sides. There have been issues of censorship and there have been issues of not being able to welcome different opinions. I feel like schools find themselves in the middle of this, where they want to appease the big money that they’re getting, but they also have to stay true to their values. And that’s a difficult line to thread.

Miller: Mark, before we say goodbye, I do wanna turn more squarely to the money piece. In recent weeks or months, more small liberal arts colleges have announced that they’re shutting down. Other schools across the country are merging in order to survive. What goes through your mind when you see these stories?

Blegen: It’s sad. Early in my career, I taught in Massachusetts. In the last week, two small, private liberal arts institutions, Hampshire College and Anna Maria College, announced they’re closing. And that hits home, the president of Anna Maria is a good friend. To watch institutions close, delivering what these eight students in front of us experience and value, it hurts on a very deep level.

Miller: What do you see as the way for the sustainable way forward, for schools like Linfield and Lewis & Clark?

Blegen: Much like Lewis & Clark, Linfield is enrollment driven. So we need to drive enrollment. But I think the experience that we created at Linfield and Lewis & Clark is so meaningful and so engaging to our students. You’ve seen wonderful examples here today. There’s a phrase out there in higher ed, that is the one that does the talking does the learning. And I think you’ve heard wonderful examples today of our students speaking, because they’ve developed relationships with faculty, they’ve developed a relationship with staff, and they can speak in class, they’re comfortable enough to do that. They can speak on the athletic field or in theater, whatever they wanna do. I think that environment that we create allows a lot of thinking to take place and we need to do a better job of selling that product to future employers.

Miller: Who are you trying to sell that to when you say future employers? Who needs to hear what message?

Blegen: I think everybody needs to hear that message. I think that the value of a liberal arts education is deep and it’s wide, and sometimes I think that gets lost in all the noise.

Miller: Sarah, how do you think about this as a faculty member, as opposed to a leader of your school?

Warren: Well, one thing that Lewis & Clark has been known for for a long time is our international perspective. And that’s something that certainly feels a little bit under attack in the current moment. And yet, we feel like that’s a really big piece of who we are, and to be able to have international perspectives in our classes and have students be able to have the opportunity to do overseas experiences.

At the same time, we’ve also realized that in some times, to understand your place in the world, you also have to be more embedded in your own community. So we’re really trying to figure out, how do we embed ourselves more deeply in the Portland community, so that we are also making a concrete difference in a positive way in the Portland community? So we’ve developed a relationship with Albina Vision Trust as their education and economic empowerment partner. And are doing so to bring lifelong learning and higher education to parts of Portland that really have been neglected for a long time. [The hope is] that by making liberal arts and higher education more relevant, we’re attracting more students and more visibility, and really showing in very concrete terms the ways in which we are a very relevant player making a positive difference in the Portland community.

Miller: I wanna end with our students. I’ve been a sort of a t-shirt cannon of dismal stats, so apologies for that. But having said that, I’m just curious, a number of you are about to leave college and go off into the world. I’m curious how you’re feeling about your futures?

Gore: Well, I’m feeling well set up, honestly, with this liberal arts degree that I’ve received. As we’ve talked about, it’s very well rounded. That being said, I’m not immune and none of us are immune to the current standings of the administration. And so I am planning to get a certification outside of my degree so that I can get a job immediately after, and then hopefully on to grad school where I will use my degree. But I feel like it’s honestly that humanity and that curiosity that I think sets me up really well to move forward in this world, and to ask questions and put myself out there.

Born: I think for me, as a freshman, what I feel kind of confident about my future is, am I valuable because of the job I’m gonna get in the end? Or is my education valuable to me because of what I’m going to learn and who I’m going to become? And that’s ultimately why I think that being here at Linfield there’s a bright future, because I’m confident I’m gonna be a great person in the end … hopefully.

Miller: Thank you so much to all of you. It was a real pleasure spending an hour with you, especially to our students in the audience and our faculty as well. Thanks to President Mark Blegen from Linfield University and Sarah Warren, executive director of community partnerships and associate professor of sociology at Lewis & Clark College. Thanks as well to the folks at Lewis & Clark and at Linfield who made today’s show possible.

“Think Out Loud®” broadcasts live at noon every day and rebroadcasts at 8 p.m.

If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983.