The liberal arts model of higher education has predominated in the United States for over two centuries. Yet this approach to college education is viewed with increasing suspicion and even disdain by parents and students. A 2023 Gallup poll of parents with children in grades 7-12, for example, found them rating “no college at all” as a better path to a good job than “a liberal arts degree.”
This stands in stark contrast to the views of those within the academy. In 2022, Inside Higher Ed polled chief academic officers at colleges and universities across the country to determine whether or not they continue to see a liberal arts education as a valuable pursuit for students. The answer was a clear and resounding yes, with 89% agreeing that such an education is valuable even for students in professional programs. Yet these same leaders recognize that those outside of the academy hold liberal arts education in low esteem, with 64% indicating that “politicians, presidents, and boards are increasingly unsympathetic to liberal arts education.”
These survey results are consistent with other data showing a divide between those within and outside academia over the value of a liberal arts education. Students, faculty, and administrators believe that such an education equips students with a broad-based education that confers skills in critical thinking, effective communication, collaboration and teamwork, and engaging with others across lines of difference. Such skills are not only valuable but are among those that are most widely prized by employers.
Does a liberal arts education deliver the benefits its advocates claim? While much anecdotal information exists about the value of such an education, rigorous empirical evidence of its utility is frustratingly thin. In the absence of data demonstrating the financial and non-financial outcomes of a liberal education, institutions of higher education are finding it increasingly difficult to convince students and parents of its value.
To help begin to fill this evidence gap AVDF recently awarded a $355,000 grant to the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). The grant will support the AVDF/ACLS Fellowships for Research on the Liberal Arts, which provides funding and data training to up to five scholarly projects exploring the impact of liberal arts education using the College and Beyond II (CBII) data set.
The CBII data set was created by a team of scholars and staff at the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) based at the University of Michigan with support from the Mellon Foundation. The data set includes more than one million student records, 50 million course enrollments, and alumni surveys for 2,800 respondents. Through the ACLS-administered program, five researchers will be awarded grants of $45,000 to use the CBII data set to examine how a liberal arts education impacts graduates’ lives and careers.
“ACLS is excited to partner with the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations on this important research initiative,” said ACLS Vice President James Shulman. “As the rising cost of higher education leads students and families to question the value of a college education, we need a fuller understanding of the varied impacts of a liberal arts education. Research conducted with the Foundations’ support, the rich data of CBII, and this competitive fellowship program will deepen our collective understanding of an approach to education that aims for more than the specific pre-professional preparation for a graduate’s first job.”
After a rigorous, interdisciplinary peer review process, ACLS has named four AVDF/ACLS Fellows for Research on the Liberal Arts:
Radomir Ray Mitic
Assistant Professor of Higher Education, William & Mary
Examining the Impact of Public Liberal Arts Education on Cultivating Civic and Democratic Citizenship: Causes and Results
This project will utilize the CBII dataset to examine associations between liberal arts education and the development of qualities of engaged citizens such as openness to diversity and challenge and civic and democratic behavior.
Gabe Avakian Orona
Postdoctoral Scholar, Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology, University of Tübingen, Germany
Understanding How Liberal Arts Experiences Influence Well-Being and Civic Engagement
This study addresses the causal relationship between liberal arts experiences, psychological well-being, and civic engagement.
Elizabeth D. Pisacreta
Director, Educational Transformation, Ithaka S+R
Using Student Data to Understand the Economic Value of a Liberal Education
The project will apply a framework of the features of a liberal arts and sciences educational experience developed by Ithaka S+R to individual-level data in CBII, to investigate how students’ exposure to a liberal educational experience is associated with their academic and labor market outcomes.
Sirui Wan
Postdoctoral Scholar/Research Associate, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Changing Study Fields During College: Understanding Patterns of Major Switching and Its Relations to Students’ Short- and Long-Term Outcomes
This project examines the patterns of switching college majors and their short-and-long-term impact, from graduation rates to earnings 10 years after graduation, and whether these patterns differ by gender, race and/or social class.
Each fellow receives up to $45,000 toward their projects and will participate in a two-day data training led by the research team at the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan. Fellows will also convene for an in-person symposium in Summer 2025 to share their findings.
In addition, recognizing the potential of her early-stage project to impact research in this area, ACLS has awarded a Project Development Grant of $5,000 to Osasohan Agbonlahor, Assistant Professor of Leadership Studies, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. Her project, Exploring Non-Monetary Consequences of College Debt Among Liberal Arts Students, will utilize the CBII dataset to investigate the non-monetary consequences of college debt such as student characteristics, institutional factors, and academic experiences, as well as post-baccalaureate levels of civic engagement, homeownership, and marriage and family formation.
ACLS Vice President James Shulman noted how philanthropic support has accelerated the collective capacity to develop quantitatively rich understanding of the nature and benefits of the liberal arts. “Building on the Mellon Foundation’s significant investment in supporting the creation of a powerful database, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations have taken the next step – fostering empirical research that can enrich our understanding of how studying the liberal arts shapes students’ lives. These projects represent the kind of research that we, as a sector, desperately need: investigating with some precision how this mode of education affects the wide range of a graduate’s life, including but not limited to their earnings at the time of their first job.”
For more information about the fellowship program and the 2024 awardees, click here.