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As someone who currently makes a living providing that liberal arts education that (I fully acknowledge) now seems to be failing huge numbers of people, I agree 100% with the rest of the above quote. One thing that really bothers me about this whole global economic crisis I keep harping on is the way it was deliberately created by people in power and is now being used as a justification to erode the value of the liberal arts education — two things that will devastate the existence of the middle class and the prevalence of critical thinking abilities for years to come. A liberal arts education is not the only social mechanism that creates a critical-thinking, informed middle class — but it has historically been one of the most important. When the value of a degree in something like theater, which doesn’t always give immediate earning power but does give a valuable perspective on the world, is eroded too fundamentally … ie, when a degree in theater becomes a ticket out of the middle class, rather than a way to stay in it or possibly join it, and when the function of the higher education system to continue to create/maintain the existence of critical thinking skills in the general population (instead of much more narrowly defined “job skills”), democracy itself is in serious danger. The erosion of the middle class is a serious political problem, as is the undermining of the higher education system, and both of these things provide the context for a lot of the anecdotal observations of this thread.
