Victor E. Ferrall

I feel profoundly neutral about this book. If you already know the value of a liberal arts education--to understand what humans have thought and learned and done for the last four thousand years, and to imagine what you might do to add to it--then the arguments here might feel a little utilitarian ("graduates from liberal arts schools get to be company presidents"). If on the other hand you're not convinced of the value of a liberal arts education, then this book will not convince you otherwise.

What interested me most turned out to be the appendices, which lay out just what the endowments are at various liberal arts colleges and how these might affect the future health of these colleges. But it doesn't feel much like anything is "on the brink" to me--only that many, many more people are going to college now than ever before, while the absolute number who go for a liberal arts education has remained about the same.… (más)