Research Push Needs a Liberal Arts Bedrock

by Chris Toumey, in The State (October 14, 2004)

Chris Toumey, a professor of anthropology at the University of South Carolina (USC), recently editorialized in The State on the continuing relevance of liberal arts education. "The genius of American higher education," he writes, "is the idea that the liberal arts prepare young people to become valuable members of society by teaching them how to think." But according to Toumey, this idea is in decline. In the 1980s, liberal arts courses increasingly came to be seen as "frivolous requirements" that merely "delayed students from getting into their occupations," and more recently, they have been affected by the growing pressure on universities to focus on income-generating scientific research. At USC and other state universities, the "tension between the excitement of scientific research and the pain of seeing the erosion of liberal arts education" has become pronounced.

Rather than dwelling on the diminishment of the "liberal arts ethos," however, Toumey suggests that liberal arts faculty should take advantage of opportunities offered by the new situation. "Many scientists are shockingly unaware of the societal implications of their work," he says, and liberal arts faculty can play an important role by researching the "ethical, legal, and social implications" of scientific work in such areas as genomics and nanotech. Interdisciplinary programs that approach science from the perspective of the liberal arts in this sense "represent a way for the liberal arts to secure a future at the heart of a research university"--and a way of transforming "the tension between scientific research and the liberal arts . . . from pain to creativity."

The full text of Chris Toumey’s editorial is available on The State’s Web site.