The idea of what a college education should be has changed over the years. This hour: what’s the value of a liberal arts degree in the twenty-first century?
We hear why tech giant Infosys has teamed up with Trinity College in Hartford to train and recruit new hires. Later, we learn how some colleges are bringing together the best parts of a liberal arts program with a focus on the skills needed in today’s workforce.
Are you a college student or a parent of one studying liberal arts?
GUESTS:
- Ravi Kumar - President at Infosys (@imravikumars)
- Joanne Berger-Sweeney - President of Trinity College
- Jeff Auker - Associate Vice President at Infosys and leader of Infosys’s new Hartford Technology and Innovation Hub (@jeffauker)
- Wilfried Nganyak Tentchou - Recent Trinity graduate who is now working as a business analyst at the Infosys Hartford hub
- Goldie Blumenstyk - Senior Writer for the Chronicle of Higher Education, and author of American Higher Education in Crisis? What Everyone Needs to Know (@GoldieStandard)
READING LIST:
Hartford Courant: Infosys and Trinity College working to make digital scientists out of liberal arts grads (April 2019) – “Nganyak Tentchou and 26 other recent college graduates are the guinea pigs of this pilot training curriculum, which Infosys plans to give all of its new U.S. hires from liberal arts backgrounds. This first batch are mainly STEM graduates, but future groups will bring more academic diversity to the company.”
Chronicle Of Higher Education: How Can Colleges Help Liberal-Arts Majors Enter the Job Market? Here’s What You Told Us (Goldie Blumenstyk, December 2018) – “This week I share some of what I heard from you, including a college’s new four-year program of professional development for its current and prospective liberal-arts majors; a professor’s campaign to get his colleagues to use their syllabi to highlight the specific workplace skills that students will acquire in their courses; and a plan for inserting the intellectual underpinnings of the liberal arts directly into professional majors.”
This show is part of American Graduate: Getting to Work, a public media initiative made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. More at cptv.org/makingthefuture
