"We are pumping out liberal arts grads " You mean humanities graduates. The Liberal Arts is not about making better managers, that's what an MBA is for, the li

"We are pumping out liberal arts grads " You mean humanities graduates. The Liberal Arts is not about making better managers, that's what an MBA is for, the liberal arts is about exposing students to a wider variety of fields. We have way too many people majoring in fields like history or literature, without corresponding educations in math and science for them to be truly "liberally educated." The point of education is only partly to prepare individuals for a specific career. (Technically, that's not even education, but rather "career training.") The other part is to give them the intellectual tools they need to be parts of society, not just as good worker drones, but as citizens and fully formed individuals. This is something the liberal arts does attempt to address, while specialized training does not. Having a strong knowledge of history really helps when it comes to voting, for example. Even from a career preparation standpoint, however, there is a point to liberal, or at least multidisciplinary, education. That is having an understanding of multiple fields makes it much simpler for one to understand how one field affects another. Just about anyone with a CS degree can write software to a spec but someone with knowledge about both CS and accounting might actually understand the spec when it comes to accounting software and anticipate the needs of clients. All that said, one really needs to differentiate between the liberal arts and the humanities. The humanities are set of disciplines such as history, philosophy, art, etc. which alone, have limited practical use but have a long tradition of being studied in western society. The liberal arts is an approach to education that seeks broad exposure, including the humanities but also including disciplines such as math and science. This term dates back to the reign of Charlemagne, FWIW.