Liberal arts education and Economics 101

In an earlier blog entry, I spoke of the need one often feels to come up with good economic arguments for an education in the liberal arts.  Now, again, I’m no economist, but the president of Yale, Richard C. Levin, is, and I’ve read a couple of recent addresses in which he does just that. 

His argument goes something like this.

Diversification is good—in any economy, as in life.  The more an economy is diversified, the better off it is, especially In Times Like These.   (The relative success of the Manitoba economy over the past few years as compared to its richer, less-diversified neighbour a couple of provinces over is testimony to this.)

What can be said about an economy in general can be said about its labour force in particular.  The more a labour force is diversified, the better off it is, and the better off the economy is as a whole.  A diversified labour force should include people with many different types of training, including those having a good ole liberal arts education.

Dr. Levin’s argument seems pretty compelling to me.  We often forget that although universities are involved in training in the widest possible sense of the word, the training that we do is different from that done elsewhere in similar institutions of higher learning.  Economically speaking—ahem—there is no substitute for a liberal arts education, as there is no substitute for other types of training.  A labour force or an economy that is lacking in it is an impoverished one.

We need to hear this type of argument more often—especially In Times Like These.

When is a degree in English not a degree in English?

Recruitment of new students is a year-round activity for universities these days, but this is the time when The Big Push actually starts to happen.  Canadian recruiters are out in full force, in Canada and abroad.  Open Houses are organized, Information Booths set up, pens and tote bags stamped with nice logos.

As one begins to play a more direct role in this and to have a closer contact with prospective students (and with Mom and Dad), one is not surprised to find out that the most pressing concern is a purely pragmatic one: "Learning X is all well and good, (Sir,) but what can I (or my daughter or my son) do with a degree in X?"

I am of two minds on this question.  My first mind, having received its training in the Humanities, would tend to invoke the long, age-old tradition of generally bearded thinkers and writers who spoke of pursuing knowledge for its own sake, of becoming well-rounded citizens, of learning for the sheer joy of learning, etc. and etc. and etc.  Now, my second mind, knowing full well that most of these thinkers and writers didn’t have or need real jobs, would claim that my first mind wasn’t exactly in its right mind and would find that answer totally unsatisfactory.

So, I tried to come up with a good answer to this question, and here it be--my attempt, that is.  For the purposes of the illustration alone, I will let X=English.  Here goes.

Question: What can I do with a degree in English?

Answer: Well, it’s like this...

A degree in English is not really a degree in English--at least, not in a place like the University of Winnipeg nor in most other universities in Canada.  A degree in English is a degree in many things.  Sure, you might major in English and take many courses in English, but to get a degree in English (or in anything else) you are also required to take many courses in a number of other disciplines; and so, a degree in English is really a degree in English and French and Economics and Women’s and Gender Studies and Biology and Applied Computer Science, etc. and etc. and etc.

This type of breadth in a degree program is what is usually meant by liberal education, and it is not found in all university systems.  In Great Britain, for instance, it is a lot less prevalent, so a degree in English there is actually more of a degree in English than it is here.  The level of specialization at the undergraduate level in England would generally be more akin to the level of specialization found at the graduate level in Canada.  It is ironic that in the midst of the current crisis in the British post-secondary system, there are calls to move towards the North American liberal education model of undergraduate degree--ironic because liberal education is a European invention.

The breadth that a degree in English has at a place like the University of Winnipeg, then, is what--from a purely pragmatic point of view--allows a graduate to develop the wide range of skills needed to thrive in the highly competitive world of tomorrow, etc. and etc. and etc.  It is what will give him or her the range of options and opportunities that would not be available otherwise.

Question: What can I do with a degree in English?

Answer: A whole lot more than if you didn't have one.

University 101: A Shout-Out to King Philippe-Auguste

 As we know, the modern thing we now call the university goes way back.  In fact, the modern thing we now call the university was called a university even well before modern times.  The university--res and nomen--harkens back to the good ole days of yore.  Actually, the university harkens back to even before the days of yore. Yore, a 14th-century word, comes into being a good one hundred years after the university does.  The university is pre-yore, a thing born of the 13th century, and in France--unless one considers Bologna, but that’s a discussion for another time.

What we call the university has its origins in that most underrated of medieval institutions—the alcohol-fueled tavern brawl.  Unfortunately, I cannot take credit for this felicitous turn of phrase (although I did add “alcohol-fueled” to it); I remember it from a little book on medieval universities, but for the life of me, I can’t find it now.  It came to mind again as I was reading the two-volume Histoire de l’Université de Paris et de la Sorbonne (1994), by André Tuilier.  

But I digress.

In the spring of the year 1200, then, a fight broke out between a number of Paris students and some locals.  Fisticuffs between medieval “gown” and medieval “town” were not rare--more often than not, instigated by the townies; but this particular alcohol-fueled brouhaha was rather exceptional.  By the time the dust had settled, five students were dead.  What happened next was also exceptional: King Philippe-Auguste, not impressed by the work of his deputy, the Paris prévôt, decided to remove the students from under his jurisdiction and decreed that they would henceforth fall under the legal authority of the bishop of Paris.

To us moderns, centuries removed from these events, this doesn’t really seem significant: one medieval authority is worth another and they were all the same anyway.  Yet, the bishop’s authority in the good ole days of pre-yore was real, real in the sense that it was more respected than that of the prévôt.  To be placed under the legal jurisdiction of the bishop of Paris in the city of Paris meant that the students were free to conduct their business as students, an academic business, without fear of being hassled.

This was the first major step towards the creation of the autonomous institution of higher learning we know as the university.  The second one involves a chancellor and a pope--neither of whom walks into a tavern...

The Fall of the Fall of the Roman Empire

If I were to do it all over again, I think I’d like to be an historian of late Antiquity when I grow up.  It’s not that I dislike what I currently do, but I find this particular field of scholarship to be extremely interesting.

In the past three decades, what we thought we knew about what happened in Western Europe and in the Mediterranean world around the end of the fifth century--the fall of the Roman Empire--has completely changed.  The work of scholars such as Peter Heather and Chris Wickham has challenged the narrative that generations of others had accepted as unquestionable.

Gone is the story of the mace-wielding, bearskin-wearing, Germanic-speaking hordes of invaders who finally managed to break through the Imperial defenses, pound the decaying Empire into the ground and, thus, give birth to the multiple barbarian kingdoms which would later become the various nation-states of Europe.  Gone are those historical maps full of gigantic blood-red arrows with the pointy bits aimed downwards, representing the North-South path of the invaders through the centuries.

The new scholarship in this field does not speak of such invasions.  Apparently, massive movements of people(s) were as rare then as they are now.  The new scholarship still uses the term ‘barbarians,’ but simply as a type of shorthand for non-Romans.  There were no barbarian invasions, then, and Rome came a-crashing down with a giant all-at-once thud only in bad movies.  Beginning (culminating) in the late fifth century, the Roman world--not Empire--underwent a transformation--not a fall.  The barbarians--a very heterogeneous lot, some of whom were quite ‘Romanized’--were less invaders than migrants, immigrants even, who were more or less accommodated into the Roman world.

One of the main causes of this renewal in Fall of Rome Studies, so to speak, is the internationalization of scholarship.  Nationalistic interests had played a large part in the genesis of the old narrative pitting Germanic hordes against decadent Romans.  The influx of scholars ‘from away,’ of those without--or perhaps with fewer--such ideological leanings has led to many fresh insights.  The innovative work of the Belgian-born Canadian Walter Goffart, whose career spanned thirty years at the University of Toronto before it led him to Yale, is to me the best example of this.

The Fall of the Roman Empire probably did not happen; the Fall of the Fall of the Roman Empire certainly did.  Such major paradigm shifts occur in many disciplines at certain times.  Some scholars are fortunate enough to be part of the invading hordes.

Des Poys au lart, cum commento

One of my favourite French authors is the Renaissance humanist François Rabelais. He was a writer of fiction, he was a medical doctor, he was a monk. He knew Latin, he knew Greek--although as a monk he wasn't really allowed to know Greek--as well as many of the dialects that made up the French language of the sixteenth century. With Victor Hugo, he has the richest vocabulary of any French writer. When I was an undergraduate, his works particularly appealed to me because I found in them many of the weird, archaic characteristics of the language I spoke at home--Acadian--and eventually thought they weren't so weird after all: turns out they were just French.


In a famous episode of the first of Rabelais' five novels, Pantagruel (1532), the title character finds in the great (and real) library of St. Victor’s Abbey a book called Des Poys au lart, cum commento, which would translate as On Beans and Pork, With Commentary.  There is no indication as to whether it was dog-eared or not, but it must have been a page-turner, surely.  Next to it on the shelf are the following other great works: The Pleasures of the Monastic Life, The History of the Hobgoblins, and a weighty tome called Ars honesti pettandi in societate--a sort of Renaissance self-help book, I guess.


Having his character browse the shelves of St. Victor’s Abbey allows Rabelais to gleefully mock the then dying culture of scholasticism. With its wacky-sounding, spurious works of scholarship, this culture had exhausted its possibilities long ago, but it continued to find a stronghold in certain quarters of European intellectual life, such as the great Paris university of la Sorbonne.


Like his fellow Renaissance humanists, Rabelais considered scholastic works to be pointless and irrelevant; and yet, he would have had enough of a historical consciousness to realize that there is hardly anything more pointless and irrelevant than pointlessness and irrelevance. On Beans and Pork, With Commentary and its neighbours, of course, were never real books, but they are still my all-time favourite fake books.  They speak to me. They were as pointless and irrelevant to the fake sixteenth century as Rabelais’ novels are to our real twenty-first. 

Books

I like books, honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned books, hardcover, paperback, books of all kinds. I like fiction books, history books, philosophy books, reference books, old books, new books, serious books, funny books. I like books about books. I like books in French and books in English. When I was a kid, I liked The Hardy Boys, Agatha Christie and Louis L'amour. As a grownup, I like The Hardy Boys, Agatha Christie and Louis L'amour--and other books too. I tend to read more than a few books at once. I finish some, restart others when I've forgotten my place, set many aside unfinished.

Now don't get me wrong. I like ebooks and ibooks as well. I have an iPad and an iPod Touch. I carry in my pocket an entire library of books, many of which I've started and stopped reading more than a few times. Ebooks and ibooks are very handy. If one is stuck anywhere for more than two minutes, there they are. Reference ibooks are especially handy. Want to know the figurative meaning of some obscure 19th-century word, there it is.

But nothing beats honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned books. They are a technological wonder. They are cordless, wireless and HD. You can read them over and over again and they won't wear out. In fact, as long as it's light out, they require no technical support whatsoever. You can trust books. You open one this Tuesday to page 2, it says exactly the same thing it said Monday ten years ago on page 2. You lose one, it eventually shows up somewhere, just a tad dustier. If you simply know your sevens, eights, nines, you can easily master its information storage-and-retrieval system. They are cheap. Their usefulness does not depend on undersea cables or orbiting satellites. They are democratic.

Granted, ibooks and ebooks share some of these technological features with honest-to-goodness books, but they are not just the same. The best thing about honest-to-goodness books is that you can open one, take a pen, write your name in it, and no matter what kind of book it is, who wrote it, how many hundreds of years ago or how far it was written, it instantly becomes your own.