What is your personal goal in life? Do you strive for money? Or is your main goal in life to do what makes you happy? Whatever your answer is, the way to achieve it is to take classes in the liberal arts field. Liberal arts prepare you for not just one career, but many. These kind of classes stretch the mind and imagination, allowing creation to flow. STEM classes are focusing on one sole career goal, where liberal arts are pushing to expand to many different places. Liberal art classes are required at colleges, such as certain English classes. That shows just how important those types of classes are. STEM classes aren’t required, they’re for when you go on with your major. So liberal art classes are the basis of everyone’s education. Critics will say STEM classes are more important because without them, you wouldn’t know how to make certain calculations or advance medicines, or those types of life-changing things. But you need liberal arts as your foundation before you get into those types of education. Therefore, liberal arts classes are more important than STEM educations.

One of the biggest supporting statements to the claim is this: liberal art classes prepare you for many different jobs. STEM classes just prepare you for one certain career. This was emphasized throughout all three articles, but I think it was explained best in the article by Mark McNutt. While taking the liberal art courses, you learn about topics that are applicable to every career in the world, from history to English courses. These liberal arts classes are the foundation that allows students to branch off and find their interests. It comes before the students can even dream of going to a STEM field. That shows that liberal arts are better.

A Few of the Opportunities with a Liberal Arts Degree

Liberal arts are required at colleges. Classes in the STEM fields aren’t required, but put there for people to advance when they are ready to. On our campus, for instance, we have ten goals we need to complete, and each goal has classes that qualify for that goal. However, for goal one, there is a communication studies class that is required and an option of a couple English classes, in which one is required (some more challenging than others). All the other goals, the ones with the STEM classes, gives you options. The liberal arts ones are required. Since liberal arts are required, that proves that liberal arts are more important than STEM educations.

Liberal arts classes also shape students’ minds in different ways. Studies prove that liberal art classes stretch students’ minds and make them more creative thinkers. Employers have been looking for that type of employee in recent years, so that makes liberal art graduates more likely to get a job (Ray). If that is what employers are looking for now, doesn’t that show that liberal arts are more important? I think so. If you don’t interest any employer, you just spent thousands of dollars and many years of your life on absolutely nothing.

cultivate a creative mind - creativity

Creative Minds

Those who oppose this view will often say that STEM educations make you more money than careers in liberal arts. Graduates that are in STEM careers have higher-paying jobs, and make more money in their life than liberal arts graduates.

Money Influences People’s Views

That is true, however, the times are changing and so is that statement. Employers are looking for people with creative minds, people who are imaginative thinkers (Christ). Studies prove that liberal arts classes provide those kinds of students. Therefore, employers are hiring more and more liberal arts graduates. Also, a degree in liberal arts can get you many different types of jobs, whereas a STEM degree gets you a certain job (an example would be a nursing graduate gets a nursing job). So because of that, if the STEM graduate’s job is going out of necessity, and all the jobs in that certain field are laying people off, that graduate is without a job. If a liberal art graduate’s job is declining in necessity and they get laid off, they can always go look for a job in a different field because their liberal arts classes prepared them for multiple jobs.

Critics also say that STEM classes are more important because they are the classes that bring people into the world-changing careers. Without these classes, there would be no medicine advances. There would be no mathematical perfection to get the architecture of the new buildings just right. There would not have been the Space Race between the United States and the USSR. So STEM classes are more important.

That is true as well, but the liberal arts classes provide the background needed to advance into the STEM fields. As a very basic example, you would not be able to read instructions on how to fix the broken car part if you didn’t learn to read in your liberal arts classes. Also, liberal arts graduates work right alongside STEM graduates out in the real world. The STEM graduate will make a breakthrough in something, but they need a liberal arts graduate to help them patent whatever it was they made, to help them review scientific journals, and so much more. Because of this, it is unfair to say that the world-changing careers are simply those in the STEM field when liberal arts graduates work right alongside them. So, liberal arts classes are still more important because they do just as much in the “real world” as STEM careers, and liberal arts classes are the background to STEM careers.

In conclusion, liberal arts classes are more important than STEM classes because they provide the background for all our knowledge, they prepare you for all sorts of jobs, and they provide the type of creative mind that employers are looking for.  People will say STEM classes are better because they make more money in the long run and they are the jobs that provide world-changing discoveries.  However, we know that not all STEM careers will make more money because it’s all based on opportunity, and people in STEM careers work right alongside people with liberal arts degrees.