RALEIGH, N.C. – For Bill Zandi, the son of Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi, enrolling as a student at a prestigious private institution like Wake Forest University was less surprising than the student’s choice of major: philosophy.
“Originally I was going to follow in my dad’s footsteps, but I’ve always been more interested in philosophical ideals,” the younger Zandi said.
With the cost of higher education soaring, from Ivy League schools to community colleges, an increasingly loud chorus of voices is questioning whether the results justify the cost, and whether the traditional liberal arts education, with its ideal of shaping well-rounded lives, is outmoded in the contemporary world of high-tech work.
To answer those questions, Wake Forest is convening a gathering of faculty, administrators and thinkers from around the country to examine the value of higher education. The “Rethinking Success” conference is scheduled to start Wednesday with a keynote address from former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and run through Friday.
One of the major tasks confronting higher education today is responding to skeptics who question the value of, say, a philosophy degree. Last fall, Florida Gov. Rick Scott made headlines when he told a radio talk show host that many humanities degrees were essentially luxuries and that, “I want to spend our dollars giving people science, technology, engineering (and) math degrees.”
The reason, Scott said, was simple: “So when they get out of school, they can get a job.’
Many students apparently agree: between 1990 and 2009, the number of liberal arts colleges in the United States dropped from 212 to 136, according to study by Michigan State University researcher Roger Baldwin. And while more than 20 percent of bachelor’s degrees today are granted in business, about 8 percent are granted in humanities majors.
