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Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Three good sentences

Liberal arts education has taken a beating lately from a wide range of critics (for examples on the economics department side of things see hereor here, and for a general critique see here or here). Tyler Cowen makes a good (and concise!) defense here. Here's the good stuff:
A liberal arts education helps us think with greater subtlety, even if it does not improve our performance on subsequent standardized tests. I see an impact here even on the lesser students in state universities. It also helps explain how the U.S. so suddenly leaps from having so-so high schools to outstanding graduate schools; how many other countries emphasize liberal arts education in between?

I wonder how Tyler (a libertarian, Austrian-leaning economist) feels about the fact that a significant portion of that liberal arts education is heavily subsidized?

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