What a Liberal Arts Education is ... and is Not 1 (original) (raw)

or some time, educational experts have been challenging the relevance of liberal arts education. Liberal arts education has been derided as elitist and dismissed as outmoded and ‘in trouble’. Even its advocates speak of a need for ‘revitalization’ and ‘restructuring’. These attacks have been heard most from within American academe, where the liberal arts have had the greatest impact and left the largest imprint on the higher educational establishment. Paradoxically, this criticism has reached a crescendo just at the time when interest in liberal learning is spreading across the globe. Whether in Eastern Europe or Asia, Western Europe or Africa, an increasing number of educators are looking to import and adapt liberal models of higher education.