Peter Drucker wrote the following more than half a century ago in his book his Landmarks of Tomorrow:
Since we live in an age of innovation, a practical education must prepare a man for work that does not yet exist and cannot yet be clearly defined. To be able to do this a man must have learned to learn. He must be conscious of how much there is still to learn. He must acquire basic tools of analysis, of expression, of understanding. Above all he must have the desire for self-development.
This is quoted in an article by university dean Hunter Baker which concludes as follows:
Finally, to return to the issue of liberal arts majors where we began, it is time we stopped treating them as though they were merely aesthetic in value. The student who has taken the time to read and understand Shakespeare’s plays and the novels of Jane Austen and Fyodor Dostoevsky as part of an English literature major is no one to be taken lightly or dismissed as some kind of throwback relic. She is a person who is capable of sustaining attention and learning what she needs to as her life and career develop.
Click through to read the rest in The Federalist. And see also Leah Libresco’s post here at Patheos on the president’s speech which prompted the above.