25 Reasons to Get a Liberal Education

1. A liberal education will involve you in learning how to learn, to participate actively in learning throughout your life.
2. You become more adept at problem solving, both by using sharpened analytical skills and by being able to approach situations from multiple perspectives.
3. A liberally educated person feels more comfortable talking with many different people on a variety of topics.
4. You become an excellent candidate for specialized and professional training in the health sciences, education, law, business, and graduate programs. In fact, a liberal education forms the base of any successful career.
5. You can better perceive the many connections that exist between people, places, and ideas. At the same time, you are more able to appreciate the differences.
6. You won't need to ask for whom the bell tolls.
7. A liberally educated person knows why everyday life is so utterly extraordinary.
8. You will be increasingly aware of the many dimensions and influences of the various cultures within our country and throughout the rest of the world.
9. A liberally educated person knows why buildings and landscapes are more than places and things.
10. You will personally experience the feeling that Einstein referred to when he said, “As the circle of light expands, so does the circumference of darkness around it.”
11. You will know why people such as Harriet Tubman, Tashunco Uitco (Crazy Horse), and Chico Mendes matter to all of us.
12. You will be better able to appreciate what various artists can tell us about ourselves and our world.
13. You will know why the dark side of the moon is dark and why `Claire du Lune' speaks to us so eloquently.
14. You will be better equipped to take a stance on controversial technologies such as genetic engineering and nuclear energy.
15. You won't have to depend on politicians or the media to tell you what good governmental policy is.
16. Theater can become a world within a world.
17. You will more clearly realize the complexities that are involved in everyday talk as well as formal presentations.
18. As you stand upon the hill, you might know some questions to ask.
19. You will be better able to evaluate what the real costs and benefits of various proposals might be, and who pays and who reaps the rewards.
20. You will be taking the path less traveled, and that makes all the difference.
21. A liberal education brings you beyond the `scraps of information' stage.
    “Culture is activity of thought, and receptiveness to beauty and humane feeling. Scraps of information have nothing to do with it. A merely well informed man is the most useless bore on God's earth.” Alfred North Whitehead
22. A liberal education frees you from the bounds of this present time and place for the purpose of being able to return to the here and now and see it from a whole new perspective.
23. Being a liberally educated person means that you have become more aware of the increasingly inter-dependent and inter-connected community of nations in the world. This is both a matter of survival and personal growth.
24. A liberal education gives you the tools and knowledge to help formulate not only your individual career, but your wider philosophy and purpose in life.
25. You won't necessarily know more than other people, but you will know better which questions to ask and you will be better able to distinguish between knowledge and wisdom.

James E. Mills, College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota, 1993