As colleges weigh whether to welcome students back to campus this fall, they do so under the burden of financial pressures on higher education that have been building for over a decade. Among these pressures is a question increasingly prominent in media: Given the rising cost of tuition, what is the return on investment of a college education? Since the last financial crisis, this question has often been used to set up a false choice between liberal arts education and career-oriented education in STEM or business. In this episode, we’ll hear why this is based on a flawed understanding of “employability” in evaluating higher education, and learn why moving beyond the binary of liberal arts vs business helps students and even, democracy itself.
Guests
Matthew Tadeschi Hora, Lynn Perry Wooten, Pierre Gentin
Host
Michelle Harven
Writing and Production
Written by Keith Schumann with input from T.A. Frank, Miguel Padró, Felicia Davis, and the Business & Society Team.
Recorded by Ben Eyler and Amina Akhtar and edited by Jesse Krinsky.
The Business & Society team wishes to thank the audio technicians and everyone involved in the production of this episode, including:
Music Samples Featured in this Episode
Chad Crouch – Algorithms (Excerpted form of the track; used under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 License)
Chad Crouch – Starlight (Excerpted form of the track; used under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 License)
Ketsa – Capable (Excerpted form of the track; used under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License)
Tobacco Road – Storyblocks Audio
Archival Audio