More Than a Major

Prior research on the value of a liberal arts and sciences education has traditionally relied on two proxies for whether students receive a liberal education: what they majored in or what type of institution they attended. Hallmarks of a liberal education—discussion and active engagement in small classes, for instance—are often assumed to be more common in the curricula of liberal arts disciplines, such as history, philosophy, and literature, or in the classrooms of liberal arts colleges than in applied fields or at large public universities.

We contend that this view is limited. Rather than assume that major and institutional type are adequate proxies, our 2020 research led us to develop a clearer, more comprehensive definition and measure of a liberal education. Earlier this year, we followed up on that research, publishing a new report that lays out a framework for quantifying the degree to which a student is exposed to the elements that comprise a liberal education.

Defining a liberal arts education

Building on the work of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), we identified three core components that capture the essence of a liberal education—pedagogy, curriculum, and community:

• Pedagogy measures deep engagement with content experts in and out of the classroom, supported by small class size, active learning, and the formation of meaningful relationships with faculty members.
• Curriculum captures both breadth and depth of academic disciplines, including in the traditional arts and sciences, as well as participation in research and independent study.
• Community speaks to experiences, both inside and outside the classroom, that offer diverse perspectives, skill development, and opportunities for growth.

Together, these three pillars—which are agnostic to students’ major and the type of institution they attended—constitute the mission and purpose of a liberal education: imparting intellectual and practical skills and experiences that support lifelong learning and foster personal and social responsibility for participation in a global society.

Measuring exposure to a liberal arts education

As we described above, we recently produced a new methodological approach—the Liberal Arts and Sciences Educational Experience (LASEE) Framework to operationalize this definition. The framework quantifies the pedagogical, curricular, and community-based features of a liberal arts and sciences educational experience for students in US institutions.^[1] We applied the LASEE Framework to student-record longitudinal data from the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research’s (ICPSR) College and Beyond II (CBII) dataset, creating individual-level metrics measuring students’ exposure to key liberal arts features. We developed a scoring and weighting procedure that produced a LASEE index score for each individual student, allowing us to examine variation between students with sufficient data. Higher scores indicate greater exposure to the defining features of a liberal arts education; lower scores indicate less exposure.

Does relying on simplified proxies risk miscategorizing who receives a liberal education and who doesn’t?

This new approach raises an important question: how do the scores that we developed compare to the two traditional measures that it replaces, major and institutional type? In other words, does relying on simplified proxies risk miscategorizing who receives a liberal education and who doesn’t? Since the dataset consists of public institutions only, we are unable to compare scores by institutional type. However, we are able to examine differences across students’ majors and areas of study. Our findings challenge the comprehensiveness and accuracy of traditional proxies commonly used in prior research.

The table below presents the average LASEE index score (out of 60) for a subset of students’ major concentrations, defined as the most frequently occurring two-digit CIP code (a taxonomic system used to categorize fields of study and track program completions), across their coursework. Two-digit CIP codes associated with the liberal arts are bolded, while those linked to disciplines traditionally not associated with the liberal arts are not bolded. If concentration alone captures the essential components of a liberal education, then we would expect significant variation in scores between students in liberal arts and sciences disciplines and those in non-liberal arts and sciences disciplines, with students in traditional liberal arts and sciences disciplines receiving higher LASEE index scores.

However, this is not the case: the majority of concentrations received similar scores, as the table shows. For example, students in engineering averaged similar scores to those in philosophy and religious studies. Students in the social sciences scored, on average, just one-tenth of a point higher than business, management, and marketing majors. A similar pattern emerges for English and health professions.

Additionally, we mapped each student’s concentration to broad areas of study commonly used to distinguish traditional liberal arts and sciences fields from others: math or sciences; social sciences; humanities; foreign language; arts; and, not associated with the liberal arts and sciences (not LAS). The table below presents the average LASEE index score (out of 60) for these areas of study.

Similar to the findings from the first table, students in areas not associated with the liberal arts and sciences received similar scores to those in traditional liberal arts and sciences areas. In addition, the minimums, maximums, and standard deviations in both tables indicate substantial variation within majors, suggesting that concentrating in a liberal arts and sciences discipline does not guarantee a student receives a liberal arts and sciences education, and vice versa. This further cements our finding that differences in liberal arts and sciences experiences are not driven by differences across academic concentrations or areas of study.

On average, students in technical and vocational disciplines actively pursue liberal educational experiences at a similar rate as students in liberal arts fields.

These findings offer strong evidence that the traditional proxies used to approximate who receives a liberal education are simply not up to the task. On average, students in technical and vocational disciplines actively pursue liberal educational experiences at a similar rate as students in liberal arts fields. This includes experiences shaped by pedagogical and community features, which major and institutional type fail to capture. Taken together, these findings show that liberal educational experiences are far more widespread and accessible than commonly assumed.

Valuing a liberal arts education

What does this all mean for the value of a liberal education? The primary analyses in our latest report suggest that the pursuit of liberal educational experiences pays off—students with greater exposure to liberal arts features see better academic and civic outcomes without experiencing negative labor market returns. These findings have implications for a broad range of stakeholders, many of whom may already be engaging in these practices to some extent, as indicated in our findings. Researchers should avoid assuming that a student’s major or type of institution they attended fully explains their educational experiences. Faculty of all disciplines should engage in teaching practices that facilitate active learning and seek opportunities to form meaningful relationships with students. Department chairs should not narrow their curriculum and provosts and deans should advocate for broad general education requirements. Administrators can invest in and protect programs that foster direct engagement with diverse people and ideas, including extracurricular activities and experiences that extend beyond the formal course of study. Policymakers should consider liberal education as a viable pathway to a credential of value. And students, in consultation with their advisor, can plan their course schedules and extracurricular activities to maximize these learning opportunities.

Crucially, this research affirms the essential role public institutions play in offering and expanding access to liberal educational experiences. Students increasingly cite workforce outcomes as their primary reason for pursuing a college degree. Deepening our understanding of liberal arts and sciences education through more accurate measurement is a key step to ensuring that students can access the educational experiences that support their success.

^[1] The full list of features can be found in this Excel download.

^[2] This table presents all concentrations with at least 3,000 students; those with fewer students were omitted for brevity. The full table can be found in Appendix D of the LASEE report.

^[3] Out of 60.

^[4] Out of 60.