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Using data from a random sample of chief liberal arts academic officers in American colleges and universities, the authors have examined formal methods for evaluating the liberal arts, resource allocation policies of chief liberal arts academic officers, and factors which influence these evaluations. The liberal arts are defined as the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Data were presented on 14 evaluation factors related to distinct dimensions of department and program excellence. Findings suggest that “resources for excellence” are unevenly distributed among departments. If the educational goal of the 1980s — quality education — is to be met, these inconsistencies in resource allocations must be corrected.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the prerequisite conditions for implementing a liberal management education and for fostering ethical students using examples from the core curriculum at Singapore Management University (SMU).

Beginning with a reading of the Carnegie Foundation's Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education: liberal learning for the professions (2011), the paper examines the contribution and limits of the findings and recommendations before discussing the place of the liberal arts in the modern university and describing a case study of liberal management education in process at SMU. It concludes with a reading of the work of Emmanuel Levinas and Asian philosophy as the basis for an ethical management education.

The paper uncovers a central shortcoming in an otherwise important Carnegie study: that business education is unlike other professional education because it lacks an autonomous discipline that studies business knowledge production as an object. Consequently, applying the liberal arts to business education risks neglecting the critical side of the liberal arts. With only the reflective side of the liberal arts in operation, management education cannot be grasped as a specific sphere of values within the pluralism of spheres advocated by the Carnegie report. Only by recreating the function of an autonomous discipline with an objective lens on business knowledge within the core curriculum at SMU can that university attempt to incorporate both the critical and reflective side of the liberal arts in management education. This kind of liberal management education can indeed lead to respect for the values of the others in the way that ethical philosopher Emmanuel Levinas envisioned.

Further development of the SMU core curriculum is necessary in order to confirm the hypothesis that the liberal arts can be brought together with management education to produce more mature, ethical students.

Liberal management education curriculum must incorporate the critical function of the liberal arts when faced with business knowledge production in order to promote a pluralist ethics. If SMU is successful, it can become a model for other global business schools in Asia and beyond.

Asian higher education is ongoing a rapid transformation in values. The shift is towards understanding the wider relationship between universities and society and the role of an education citizenry. Liberal management education can be a bridge to this new world of higher education in Asia, and beyond.

This discussion provides a fuller understanding of the two-sided nature of the liberal arts and the importance of both sides for building a liberal management education and creating ethically mature students.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness and outcomes of liberal arts in preparing people for adult roles.

Review of research and opinions about the liberal arts.

Liberal-arts outcomes results have fallen short of expectations though this may be a short coming of higher education generally. A new era of the knowledge society will shrink liberal-arts departments in humanities, literature and philosophy.

Liberal arts need definition and clarity of expected outcomes.

Jobs in liberal arts colleges will decrease given its weak effectiveness. Online education for liberal-arts areas will grow explosively.

Liberal-arts critics have been active for decades. What is different today is world wide access to all information 24/7 and massive open online courses (MOOCs).

The liberal arts hobby is a leisure pursuit that entails the systematic and fervent pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the liberal arts hobby as a setting for information behavior research.

The method of interdisciplinary translation work is used to relate existing research from the specialties of leisure studies, adult education, and information behavior. Drawing from leisure studies, the liberal arts hobby is presented within the context of the serious leisure perspective, a theoretical framework of leisure. Also, relevant research.

The basic informational features of the liberal arts hobby and adult learning project are discussed in terms of three issues of current interest within information behavior scholarship. The issues are: first, social metatheory and the ideal level of analysis; second, time and information behavior; and third, information behavior in pleasurable and profound contexts.

Research into everyday life, serious leisure and hobbies is extended and methodological tools are provided.

Information professionals, such as public librarians or systems designers, will have a better understanding of the information experience of a popular hobby group and be better able to meet their information needs.

Awareness and understanding of the liberal arts hobby will be increased across the field of information science, thereby creating a better alignment between the field and society.

The paper is the first to establish an interdisciplinary starting point for information behavior research in the liberal arts hobby.

This paper seeks to discuss the role of a public liberal-arts university in education.

The author first defines the principles and definitions of liberal education, then analyses these ideas in relation to public liberal-arts universities.

Liberal education holds enduring value in a world where state support for higher education is steadily decreasing and the author concludes that society needs public liberal-arts universities in order to maintain freedom of thought and democracies.

This piece presents a view of public liberal-arts universities in the wider context of liberal education, recession and worldwide threats to democracy and personal freedoms.

The value of the liberal arts and humanities has increasingly been called into question on multiple fronts. Attempts to bridge the practical and liberal arts through forms of civic professionalism have been gaining traction in larger spheres of influence. This article outlines the results of a deliberative civic engagement forum (n = 42) that created a space for community members from business, education, and non-profit sectors at the National Conference on Service and Volunteerism, to consider the role civic leadership education and development has in liberal arts and humanities programs. The forum was intentionally designed to have participants consider the role of the liberal arts and humanities in redefining the purposes and process of democratic engagement through a lens of civic leadership education and development. This forum was able to gather a group of people from sectors that do not normally speak to the intersection of leadership education and the liberal arts.

This paper seeks to outline the element of a liberal management education that would attend to the full human development of undergraduate management students enabling them to exercise the responsibility and leadership that the profession and practice of business and management require. It places such an education in the context of the global university today, and points to the shortcomings in management education as it is currently taught, the challenges facing implementation, and finishes with the example of Singapore Management University.

This is a discursive discussion piece drawing on philosophical texts, contemporary debates on management education, historical perspectives on the University, and the authors’ combined experience in management education and business school leadership. It was written as an argument to be debated by future interlocutors.

The article concludes that liberal management education faces obstacles to implementation. These obstacles are recast as shortcomings in management education itself. It concludes that in part by recognising and overcoming these shortcomings liberal management education holds prospects for improving the full human development of undergraduate management students, and in so doing creating business leaders who have the maturity to take responsible and visionary decisions.

The article points to the need to elaborate a concrete curriculum across the spectrum of courses and subjects in management education.

The article invites other business schools to enter into a conversation about liberal management education and share experiences of implementing reforms in management education.

Liberal management education aims to produce citizen‐leaders who have the maturity and enlightened perspective to lead in organisations and in society. The intention of the article is to encourage debate and adoption in some form of a liberal management education philosophy and curriculum at other business schools beyond Singapore Management University, with the hope of shifting the emphasis in management education to preparing students as mature citizens as well as business leaders.

Many have discussed the problems of the contemporary global university, but few have considered undergraduate management education as a crucible for working out the conflicts and challenges facing today's university.

Liberal arts colleges (LACs) have played a crucial role in the foundation and development of the US higher education system. Today, these schools face numerous organizational and environmental challenges that threaten their performance and even survival. This paper aims to examine whether Senge’s (1990) vision of the learning organization can serve a useful function in responding to these challenges.

A conceptual analysis was conducted based on research relating to learning organizations, LACs and the liberal arts tradition.

The paper identifies significant congruence between learning organization and liberal arts/liberal learning principles. LACs may benefit from applying and modifying Senge’s (1990) framework to their own unique situations.

While The Fifth Discipline has certainly contributed to the lexicon of higher education, the role that Senge’s (1990) framework plays in LACs has received scant research attention. This paper investigates the applicability of Senge’s approach to an underexplored context.

The purpose of this article is examine some of the most successful contemporary global business leaders in relation to undergraduate institution and undergraduate major in order to examine the value and return of higher education programs for global business leadership. This is an important topic in the modern global context, as there continues to be an increasing global push toward deemphasizing and defunding liberal arts education in favor of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields for college and university students around the globe.

The educational backgrounds of the 2019 Fortune 50 CEOs were researched in relation to undergraduate institutions attended and undergraduate majors. The study also included an examination of graduate education, if applicable. Using available biographical information regarding the CEOs educational backgrounds, these business leaders were compared relative to the educational data.

An examination of the undergraduate educational backgrounds of the 2019 Fortune 50 CEOs revealed an exact split between 18 STEM majors, 18 liberal arts majors and 18 business majors, with 1 CEO who began university studies but did not graduate. Upon examination, it is also apparent that some majors were more directly related to a CEO's industry, while other majors ended up having little relation to the CEO's chosen career path.

The results of this study contribute to the very important discussion concerning the long-term value of a college education. At both micro and macro levels, stakeholders are constantly questioning the ultimate return on investment of a college education, and examination of the 2019 Fortune 50 CEOs indicates that the choice of college major is only one ingredient in the overall recipe for professional success. For these business leaders, there were a wide variety of educational paths, in terms of college academic preparations, that eventually led to the very pinnacle of professional and leadership attainment.

This study demonstrates that a particular undergraduate field of study is not going to make or break a career, and the examination of these Fortune 50 CEOs indicates that one's ultimate career achievement is not simply relegated to the specific field of undergraduate major.

Ruth Brandon looks at the Liberal Arts courses in the United States and reveals where our own James Commission found some of its ideas.