In her TED talk, Alex Ellison speaks about the benefits of a liberal arts education, particularly when considering current vocational patterns. People now tend to work for only a short while in a certain area before moving on to something different. Ms. Ellison calls this emerging generation of workers, “job hoppers.” She argues that a liberal arts education will equip people entering the job market with the skills to excel in a wide range of fields, making them more competent “job hoppers.” I had never thought of or heard this reasoning before, and I found it very interesting. In class, we all seemed to agree that a liberal arts education makes us more cultured and thought-out individuals, but we didn’t really discuss how the humanities might actually put us on more stable financial ground. We largely assume that directed vocational training is the way to go if you want to live comfortably, but that kind of mentality might leave college graduates ill equipped to learn something different if their current career path isn’t working out.
As Alex Allison says in her talk, liberal arts is meant to liberate us. It cultivates our different skills and opens up many new opportunities.
Here’s a link to Ms. Ellison’s talk: Alex Ellison and “Job Hoppers”
Hadassah, I think that Ted talk really gave a great, new reason why liberal arts educations are important nowadays. While I wouldn’t try to discredit her argument, I would like to point out that the “job hopping” phase won’t last forever. In one of my classes this semester we discussed how life tends to work in a circular fashion and therefore we’ll eventually get back to a time when people tend to have steadier jobs (until the circular path continues and brings us back to job hopping ). Nevertheless, I do think liberal arts educations can be quite valuable even if we aren’t in a “job hopping” era because, as we mentioned in class, it gives students the abilities to overcome a wide variety of problems and tasks.