12Jan/071

Liberal Arts is Still the Secret

Taken from USA TODAY, January 11, 2007:

A panel of national higher education and business leaders issued a road map Wednesday for reforming higher education, arguing that college graduates must be able to do more than equip themselves for their first job.

Rather, it says in a report, "in an economy fueled by innovation, the capabilities developed through a liberal education have become America's most valuable economic asset.

The report identifies four "essential learning outcomes," grounded primarily in the liberal arts, that graduates should possess. They are: a broad base of knowledge across multiple disciplines; intellectual and practical skills such as teamwork and problem-solving; a sense of personal and social responsibility, including ethical reasoning; and experience applying what they learn to real-world problems."

What does this mean to you? Simply this, the capacity to think, pull from a broad base of knowledge, work well with others and yes, understand the world, its history and how things fit together is still the most valuable commodity for a person to have.

Narrow, technical training education may provide you a great living. However, it may not give you a great life. Creativity, innovation and depth are all essential to the meaningful life. Long live liberal arts. It's a shame that some people still don't see the value. A real shame.

Submitted by: bill

Filed under: Sales Motivation Leave a comment
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  1. Mike Drapeau
    February 7th, 2007 - 10:00

    Bill,

    I think you missed the mark here.

    With regard to the sales profession, I don’t hear any clarion calls for “narrow technical training” or that some people “don’t see the value” in a liberal arts education.

    Quite the contrary.

    What I hear the clamor for and what various academic studies will be revealing in the not-too-distant future is the fact that a yawning gap in our educational offerings for undergraduates is the ability to major in or at least specialize in the professional of sales.

    Isn’t it at least a bit ironic that we have slews of marketing programs at places like the Wharton School at U Penn and UVA’s McIntyre School of Commerce have advanced undergraduate marketing programs but almost no courseware or study focus on selling. Talk about a gap!

    Since sales is the largest professional category in the U.S. one would reasonably conclude that undergraduates might actually emerge from their 4 years of schooling with at least a rudimentary understanding of sales methodology, sales philosophy, sales techniques, etc.. Some of the pushback from institutions of higher learning is no doubt the residue of a certain priggishness about sales – a belief that it us underneath their academic scrutiny. With the rise of sales benchmarking and other applications of science to the sale profession, this educational distaste is bound to diminish.

    I hope and expect to hear that in 5-10 years undergraduates will boast of having majored in ‘sales’ and, along with other liberal arts disciplines (e.g. Composition, History, Art, Music, etc..) they picked up in their first couple of years, will be more than ready for the challenges ahead.

    Mike Drapeau
    mike.drapeau@salesbenchmarkindex.com


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