New England Board of Higher Education » Bentley University

Amid Focus on Science Literacy and Business Ed, Liberal Arts Blossoms

John O. Harney — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 20:15:58 +0000

"Science courses belong in the liberal arts curriculum for the benefit of both science and non-science majors."

That's one of the main findings in a study released by the Cambridge, Mass.-based American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Science and the Educated American: A Core Component of Liberal Education warns that the pace of scientific and technological change means all adults should be prepared to learn and evaluate new science information after they leave schooling.

Among the report's major themes:

Without a basic level of scientific literacy, the public cannot rely on even the best science journalism and communications to help them make informed decisions about science issues.
Science courses belong in the liberal arts curriculum for the benefit of both science and non-science majors.
Teaching science should convey the wonders and rewards of science but also the limits of science and dangers of misapplying it.
Science and the humanities have much more in common than is generally appreciated.

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In June, I was at an orientation for a major New England university where one speaker was extolling the non-careerist aspect of liberal arts, noting with a wink: "It’s not as if BP is going to go hire a vice president of philosophy … but maybe they should.”

The audience understood his wink. Philosophy is the discipline often invoked to flaunt the non-practical nature of the the liberal arts. And at the time, BP was spilling millions of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico and handling the blame badly.

The speaker, ironically, was a chemist.

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About 10% of the Boston College Carroll School of Management (CSOM) Class of 2011 and 25% of the CSOM Class of 2012 are pursuing a double major or minor in a liberal arts field, according to The Heights, the Boston College student newspaper, which has been running a series on liberal arts.

The students pursuing a double major or minor in the liberal arts defy a national trend of students moving away from a liberal arts education toward concentration in a professional field. More than 20% of the bachelor's degrees awarded in the U.S. in the 2006-07 academic year were business degrees, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

CSOM administrators observed that "other local colleges, such as Babson and Bentley, which are business-focused in their undergraduate education, incorporate relatively little of the liberal arts into the undergraduate education."

Progressive Business Leaders to Hold CEO Summit on Inventing Sustainable, Competitive Economy

NEBHE Admin — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 19:40:38 +0000

Stonyfield Farm CEO Gary Hirshberg, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center CEO Paul Levy, Boston Globe writer Scott Kirsner, Cape Wind CEO Jim Gordon and Northeastern University economist Barry Bluestone will be among speakers at the Progressive Business Leaders Network's 4th Annual CEO Summit to be held Friday, Oct. 8, from 7:45 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Bentley University in Waltham, Mass.

The four major candidates for governor of Massachusetts have been invited to an afternoon forum.

Click here for an agenda and list of speakers .

Higher E(d)volution: Six Mass State Colleges “Re-branded” as Universities

John O. Harney — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 18:21:10 +0000

It's an evolutionary fact of life in higher education. Good courses become programs. Worthy programs become schools. Schools become colleges, and colleges in some cases, become universities.

Yesterday, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick signed legislation that re-branded six state colleges—at Bridgewater, Fitchburg, Framingham, Salem, Worcester and Westfield—as state universities, effective Oct. 26. Massachusetts Maritime Academy, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts will not change names, but will be part of the new state university system.

Some friends recently reckoned that after all these years writing about higher education, I would be able to clarify what distinguishes a college from a university. The best I could do was point them to the piece that Ken Lemanski wrote for the Fall 2007 issue of NEJHE.

Ken was writing about state colleges, which have their own set of regulations to deal with and their own reasons to change status. My friends were asking more broadly about why a wave of New England private institutions—Bentley, Bryant and Lesley, for examples—had all gone from college to university.

The answer to that is—you guessed it—marketing. Campus officials reason they'll get more students and more research dollars when they're known as universities, and their graduates will land better jobs. (Which makes you wonder why they don't go the whole nine yards and insert the phrase Harvard University into their new names.)

Check out the ceremony announcing the new Massachusetts names on Youtube.