Letter: Better breadth than depth

(publication link)

As published:

I READ the article about American colleges of the liberal arts and sciences (StarEducation, Aug 16) with interest and would like to offer some comments.

In the United States, a university is like a bunch of colleges stuck together. Even if you go to Harvard, Princeton or Yale, as an undergraduate you will probably be registered under the university’s college of the liberal arts and sciences. In general, undergraduate institutions are referred to as “liberal arts colleges” and going for your first degree is referred to as “going to college”

Liberal arts colleges are marketed as paying pay more attention to the “breadth” of one’s education rather than the “depth” of one’s industrial specialisation.

Some people argue that education systems which try to emphasise both “breadth” and “depth” sometimes ends up producing only students with mediocre breadth and depth of knowledge, and may hinder ambitious students from highly-focused specialisation in a subject area, or from highly-focused diversification.

At a liberal arts college, out of four years of coursework, students sometimes take more than half their course work outside any particular discipline or department.

This means most major concentrations are the equivalent of one or two years of solid coursework. This is normal in the US and makes it possible for students to acquire double or triple majors with relative ease.

For example, Mathematics and Economics make a good and highly marketable combination. Students with this combination become even more marketable if they take up Physics as well.

If students have a “shopping period” of two years before they need to decide on a major, even at a relatively small college with only 12 departments, students may, within the first two years, overload and end up with six courses per semester and 24 classes (at two classes per discipline or department).

Now, if the departments in the college are well organised and the courses introduce the students to the nature, scope and research methodology of various disciplines, that would be fine.

However, perfect scenarios do not always exist.

In actual fact, most students at liberal arts colleges hardly know anything about what 50% of the available disciplines cover – many do not know that certain faculties or disciplines even exist on their campus.

In short, as long as students know what they want out of their undergraduate education, the four-year liberal arts college can provide the students with a fantastic environment and facilities to pursue their interests or dreams.

So far, this tertiary education option seems to be less popular among Malaysians who are generally obsessed with specialisation at younger ages for quicker marketability.

But I encourage high-achievers to consider a liberal arts degree for their first degree so that they may learn a bit more about world history before specialising for the future.

HWA YANG JERNG Seremban.