There is a practical work product: research, formation of theories, etc. Edit: Possible new ways to understand the modern world. Just like archaeology or palaeo

There is a practical work product: research, formation of theories, etc. Edit: Possible new ways to understand the modern world. Just like archaeology or palaeontology. In my opinion, the issue in liberal arts education is with grade inflation, along with the scalability of assessing learning discussed in the essay/these comments. I suspect that really rigorous liberal arts education is much harder to do at scale than really rigorous science/engineering education because to be blunt, there is less room for argument in scientific concepts. For example, properly grading student essays and research is more difficult at scale in the liberal arts and the level of the whole thing gets dumbed down as a result.