The Importance of Liberal Arts in the Digital Age

Journal: Journal of Higher Education Research DOI: 10.32629/jher.v2i4.421

Yan Zhang

Hong Kong Baptist University

Abstract

Liberal arts are vulnerable to the challenge that they are useless in the digital age. “Uselessness is a kind of usefulness” — that is, although liberal arts fail to mold the practical skills, for example, the skills that enable people to earn much money in markets, they are useful in other senses, which is a common and seemingly philosophical answer to the question about the function of liberal arts. Such an answer, however, seems insufficient and abstract. In this article, the author intends to demonstrate with examples and statistics that liberal arts play an irreplaceable role in nursing people’s critical thinking, expanding their imagination and understanding of the differences of the world. Moreover, technology is essentially related to the understanding of human society. User-friendly technology is the combination of empathy and the understanding of humanity.

Keywords

liberal arts, soft skills, the digital age

References

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[10] Vivek Wadhwa. Why liberal arts and the humanities are as important as engineering?
[11] JM Olejarz. Liberal Arts in the Data Age.

Copyright © 2021 Yan Zhang

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