It’s time to transform the focus, mission, and rhetoric of liberal arts and combine its focus on cross-disciplinary critical thinking with real world experience. Here’s one proposal.

Nearly 50% of students today leave college without earning a degree. The data suggests students drop out from lack of funds, interest, mentorship, and real world relevance. Even at elite private universities where student completion rates soar to over 90%, everyone is in reform mode, trying to find the best education students need for the complex, fast-action webby world they are inheriting. Some want to argue that online course offerings (including those offered free by universities like MIT, Harvard, or Carnegie Mellon) are the answer. Well-constructed online courses do work exceptionally well in certain fields, especially technical ones that yield to individualized, challenge-based learning. But skills-acquisition is no substitute for a college degree. Just ask companies like Google and Apple. They may pick the cream of online student crop for by-the-job, outsourced tasks that come without benefits or job security, but typically they do not look at those with online diplomas for future innovative corporate leaders.

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