Giving Compass' Take:

• The Aspen Institute reports on their efforts to change the thinking around higher education, preserving a dedication to humanities, while also finding ways to mix business skills with a liberal arts curriculum.

• Those invested in college funding should look at the toolkit presented here, and how we can help improve the ways that higher ed serves students.

• Here's more on how to balance workforce training with traditional higher ed.

The Aspen Institute Business & Society Program is proud to present the release of Charting a New Course. This toolkit combines two powerful resources: a curated selection of innovative courses that marry the liberal arts and business in coherent and robust ways, and step-by-step strategies to successfully advocate for curricular change. This document is both a reflection of dynamic debates about the liberal arts in recent years, and a bridge into an emerging future of work.

Facilitating forward movement is central to the design of Charting a New Course. The resources curated in this toolkit empower academic leaders to navigate beyond an either/or binary that often becomes an impasse for discussions about the future of higher education. Namely: the assumption that college education must be valued either as practical preparation for a career, or as development of critical thinking skills and creativity associated with a liberal arts education.

It’s a framing that has found newfound attention in the economic disruptions of the last decade, as the title of a 2009 New York Times article suggested: “In Tough Times, the Humanities Must Justify Their Worth.” A succession of pieces with titles like “Do Colleges Need French Departments?” (2010) and “Career-Oriented Education vs. the Liberal Arts,” (2013) illustrate how often debate has circled the same point. It continues to structure what remains a very live debate: in early 2018, plans at two US public universities to eliminate humanities offerings in favor of what proponents call more “career-oriented” programs garnered both national discussion and international coverage.

Six years ago, the Aspen Institute Business & Society Program launched the Aspen Undergraduate Consortium — to strengthen the contribution of the liberal arts to the professional preparation of future business leaders. Since that time, the 73 participating schools have generated much momentum and substantial changes on campuses. Today, conditions point to the next step of this work: sharing these resources to scale change.

Read the full article about charting a course for next-generation business leaders at The Aspen Institute.