First, it should be remembered that the most important aspect determining a student's future economic success is the prestige (or market value) of one’s degree. If one looks around at the nation’s most prestigious schools, they are almost all colleges and universities that focus in the liberal arts and sciences. Vocational and technical schools rank much lower. Western’s market value—its brand—therefore depends heavily on the strength of its liberal arts and sciences programs.

Second, most employers consistently state they are looking for graduates who write well, can analyze data, are creative, have good social skills and have an awareness of other cultures.

These are skills that are taught in the liberal arts and sciences — the traditional disciplines.

In fact, in the recent book  “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses” sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa discovered that students in the liberal fields are better prepared for future employment than students in other fields. Students who major in the liberal arts, they wrote, demonstrated “significantly higher gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing skills over time, than students in other fields of study,” the very things employers want most.

Third, the key to America’s economic success has been the creativity and flexibility that comes from a liberal arts and sciences education. As much as some students complain about their general education (GUR) courses, it is a hallmark of the American higher education system. In Europe most students enter college already enrolled in their major, unlike here where we encourage you to spend two years exploring different disciplines. But now China, India, Dubai and other countries are seeking to copy America’s example. They know that if they want to be tomorrow’s economic leaders, they will need to educate their students to be creative and to be capable of producing new ideas, not just implementing yesterday’s ideas.

Fourth, future economic success is not the only goal of baccalaureate higher education. Higher education also has humanistic and civic goals that distinguish it from vocational training. From a humanistic perspective, one of the goals of becoming educated is to help you discover your passion, and develop your own values and goals.

From a civic perspective, our country, and our world, needs graduates with knowledge of how both the human and natural worlds work. Western’s graduates, we hope, will not only just get good jobs, but will also be tomorrow’s leading citizens.

In short, students have a choice. Majoring in the traditional arts and sciences can be a risk since there is no specific job waiting for you at the end. On the other hand, your education may be deeper and richer, and your skills will prove more desirable for many employers.

At Western, there is not a wrong choice. Instead, students must ask themselves what do they want to take from Western, and what do they hope to contribute to the world beyond Western.

Johann Neem is an associate professor of history at Western.