Do the Liberal Arts & General Education Have Value in Today’s Economy?

Welcome back to all our students, faculty that may have been off for the summer and those who may have just recently taken vacation time! The halls are full with students and learning is ‘in the air’.

Fall 2019 and Academic Year 2020 is off to a great start!! Convocation, with a record number of employees attending, was a great hit with so many talented faculty and staff presenting and holding workshops during the week. The new academic year also started with beautiful, pedagogically sound, updated classrooms! The classrooms use some of the latest technology and flexible learning furniture to allow students and faculty to engage in the learning process in whole new ways. Also, reducing the maximum number of students seats in each of the four new classrooms creates environments where learning can thrive. During the first week of classes, I saw one of the large classrooms in at least five different configurations.

A tremendous thank you goes  to Jelena Ozegovic and the Learning Spaces Committee who produced the design layouts and selected furniture and technology for these rooms! Also, a huge thank you to Jeff Sixta and his Building and Grounds team, and Peter Gabriel and the IT and Media Services crew, who were not only working on these rooms during the summer but also other projects at all of our locations!

GREAT JOB EVERYONE -THANKS!!

Do the Liberal Arts & General Education Have Value in Today’s Economy? The answer is a resounding YES!! On any given day, do an Internet search for “skills gap” and you will receive thousands of articles describing the worker shortage in the U.S. such as this one on Vox, speaking of the 7.6 million jobs going unfilled earlier this year. Employers are desperately looking for skilled workers. And, more than half of the jobs in America are “Middle Skills Jobs” that require more than a high school education and less than a four-year degree. (National Skills Coalition) Some of the largest employment skills gaps reside in manufacturing, needing an estimated 4.6 million workers in the next decade, with over 450,000 open positions in January; healthcare, ‘now the U.S.’s largest employer’, where the skills gap is larger than in the overall economy (Indeed); and retail and food service workers where the demand is now higher than tech workers. “The hardest-to-find workers are no longer computer engineers. They are home health care aides, restaurant workers, and hotel staff,” (Vox) and companies are paying more to retain the workers they have.

However, working and meeting with hundreds of businesses, workforce investment boards, chambers of commerce, labor organizations and other business-related groups, when asking them what is their greatest need, their answers are nearly all the same. A typical response is ‘we need an employee who will show up on time, be ready for work, be able to think critically, have problem-solving skills, be able to speak correctly and knowledgeably with customers, do basic math, and in general be an ethical and dependable person.

The skills mentioned above are learned and nurtured through college-level general education and liberal arts courses. In the book, written by Fareed Zakaria, host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, In Defense of a Liberal Education, Zakaria argues that “it is a broad focus on a range of subjects, rather than on career or vocational skills that will prepare young people for the future.” He continues, stating that along with teaching a person how to think, liberal arts courses teach how to write; write clearly, cleanly and quickly. Continuing, that when you can write clearly, you can think clearly.

Many other books and articles have been written discussing how liberal arts programs educate and prepare graduates for life. Additional articles make the correlation between graduates who had a broad undergraduate education with financial success and have a typical higher rate of pay, earning more than $100,000 per year (InsideHigherEd.com).

For our students at Kansas City Kansas Community College, I believe we offer the best of both worlds! While many people in today’s society need to be educated and trained to obtain employment that will provide them and their family a sustainable wage, KCKCC offers many programs that provide graduates entry into more than just jobs, but careers that start at $40,000, $50,000 and even $60,000 per year. As these individuals now have financial resources to provide for themselves and their families, they also have the financial resources to continue their education, perhaps in the same field or in other areas such as the liberal arts, business or other program choices. For, as an individual advances their degrees and broadens their knowledge, additional promotion, employment and financial opportunities are provided to them.

KCKCC News! 

Last week the ESOL program along with the Intercultural Center and Student Activities partnered together to host a co-curricular activity to welcome KCKCC’s brand-new ESOL students of the College! The evening provided an opportunity for the new students to meet their peers and learn about various campus resources. Looks like a great group!!

Enrollment. From being slightly down in enrollment prior to the beginning of the semester, last week we were up approximately 1%! Thank you to all the advisors, program coordinators, deans and everyone else who assisted enrolling students at the beginning of the semester. One of the key areas enrollment was significantly up was with our enrollment at the area high schools. Credit hour enrollment was up more than 2000 credits! A major contributor to this enrollment increase was the addition of Sumner Academy back as a dual/concurrent high school. Sumner students had a particular interest in our KCKCC French class, enrolling more than 100 students this fall! Additional courses were being discussed for future semesters.

News From Across the Country. Every day, news articles are posted to various resources that are relate to what we do here at KCKCC. In an effort to keep people informed of national happenings, here are a few articles I thought you may appreciate:

“Coming Together to Serve Immigrant Students” A program at an Arizona community college helps immigrant students navigate the hidden systems of workplace culture. Read about it at the AACC 21st Century Center.

“Student Stress Surges” Community colleges are working to meet the increasing demand for mental health services nationwide. Learn what some colleges are doing in this Community College Journal article.

e-Headlines
A new law getting rid of remedial college courses in Colorado won’t take effect until 2022, but schools already are shifting away from a traditional sequence of lower-level classes that students have to pass before they can start earning credits.

Looking for Some Thursday Night Fun? Come to Upper Jewell, beginning September 12 and learn some basic self-defense. Free to all employees.  If you can’t kick higher than your head, waist or knee – Perfect!! This class is just for you! Using a mix of Judo, Traditional Aikido and Taekwondo, we will focus of pressure points and joint manipulations that anyone of any size and shape can use! it should be a lot of fun while you learn a little self defense along the way!

Image shown: Advanced wrist lock.

I promise, we won’t practice this technique until the third class! Just kidding, we may skip this one…  🙂   Please email Risala for more information.

Have a great week!!  Dr. M.