The Importance of Liberal Arts

Liberal arts in recent years have been placed as the key to driving innovation and humanity forward. Nonetheless, such context of positioning liberal arts as a more important field than STEM might be wrong because both fields are equally crucial. Developing STEM is also important since there are needed professionals who build mechanisms. Learning liberal arts is essential because some professionals must generate ideas about the technicians’ tools. The liberal arts are also important to train leaders in every sphere. For instance, teaching librarians as leaders can help enhance Information Literacy and improve campus life (Brooks et al., 2021). Therefore, liberal arts professions are as crucial as every STEM-related occupation.

Liberal arts fit into every person’s life because it gives universal critical thinking skill. This skill can be used to solve problems in everyday life or to complete work tasks effectively. According to the Held’s video-article, the ability to make thoughtful decisions using critical thinking is essential in the modern world of data overload. Since the amount of data has grown 174 times in the past 100 years, people need critical thinking daily (Held Tim, 2018). Therefore, I believe liberal arts play a crucial role in my life too.

Liberal arts are one of the essential parts in driving innovation forward. Innovation is the development of something new, and hence it requires originality. An article written by Gobble supported that liberal arts students acquire the “originality” skill much earlier than STEM students (Gobble, 2019, p. 2). This allows students of liberal arts majors to succeed in entrepreneurship which explains why most chief executives at tech firms are liberal arts major graduates (Gobble, 2019). In other words, like chief executives lead companies forward, liberal arts drive innovation into the future.

Works Cited

Brooks et al. “Information literacy leadership: The traits we didn’t know we had.”. College & Research Libraries News, Vol. 82, Issue 6, 2021, pp. 278-281.

Held Tim. “Life in the information age”. Credo, uploaded by CSU Stanislaus University Library, 2018. Web.

Gobble MaryAnn M. “Innovation Needs the Liberal Arts.”. Research Technology Management, Vol. 62, Issue 2, 2019, pp. 51-55.