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Education Dive
Associate degrees in liberal arts are on the rise, study finds
Shailaja Neelakantan
June 27, 2019
Dive Brief:
The humanities and liberal arts are on the rise at community colleges,
with the number of associate degrees awarded in those fields nearly
doubling from 2000 to 2015, according to a new study from the Community
College Research Center.
In 2015, 410,000 associate degrees were awarded in the liberal arts, up
from 218,000 in 2000. Their share as part of all associate degrees also
grew from 38% to 41% over the same time period.
Meanwhile, the share of bachelor's degrees awarded in the liberal arts declined, from 17% to 13%.
Dive Insight:
Contrary to prevailing wisdom, the CCRC report found that humanities
and liberal arts "remain a large, robust part of the U.S. postsecondary
education sector," said Clive Belfield, one of the report's authors.
And that's partly because associate and four-year degrees, regardless
of major, involve a significant amount of liberal arts coursework. More
than one-fifth (21%) of the credits students earned for a two-year STEM
degree, for example, were in the humanities. That's compared to 38% of
total credits for students who earned a two-year liberal arts degree.
Such trends could bode well for employers, who have long lamented the
lack of soft skills in their job recruits. A 2018 surveyof 200 business
and academic leaders, for example, found that new hires were "not
meeting (their) expectations in such skills as emotional intelligence,
negotiation and persuasion, and, notably, complex reasoning."
The economy needs people with social literacy and communication skills
— the kind that the humanities and liberal arts fosters — even as the
nation become more dependent on technology, Belfield told Education
Dive.
"Everybody assumes we are being replaced by robots, so they think,
‘Better get a science degree,'" he said. "Whereas, if you think about
it, the robots will be better at science than at communications and
other visual and aural skills that (humanities and liberal arts)
provide."
The CCRC report bolsters findings from a separate recent study, which
found the number of associate degrees in humanities and liberal arts
more than tripled between 1987 and 2015, from 113,300 to 363,500.
Additionally, a related CCRC study found there's plenty of value in
humanities associate degrees, as they're as good or better than STEM
and other degree programs at predicting how students will fare once
they transfer to four-year colleges.
Still, some sound a cautionary note about the rise of two-year
humanities degrees. Harry Holzer, co-author of the book "Making College
Work: Pathways to Success for Disadvantaged Students," notes that only
about 14% of students who earn an associate degree in liberal arts
complete a bachelor's degree six years later — and that such programs
have a "very low" labor market value.
Indeed, an analysis last year from Burning Glass Technologies found
that only 32,000 job postings in 2016 asked for applicants with
associate of arts degrees and that two-year programs in technical
fields tended to pay off better for students.
However, Holzer views taking humanities courses as a positive.
"(Students) can gain more communications and more of the soft skills
that industry says they don't see," he said.
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