Guy Raffa argues, contrary to popular opinion, that a liberal arts education can impart logical, analytical thinking skills just as well as a course of study in STEM can:
In “Dante’s Hell and Its Afterlife,” an undergraduate course I teach at my university, students have to work hard to achieve good results (not to mention an A-level grade) on a research essay. The “excellent” paper will contain a substantive thesis that is appropriately focused, coherent, and interpretive, not merely descriptive; a detailed analysis of well-chosen examples to support the argument; a logical ordering of parts, each contributing to the whole, with transitions and topic sentences that advance and crystallize the main points; an effective use of information from credible sources, correctly cited and documented; and all expressed in clear, concise, grammatically correct prose.
My course – a large-format class in which students read Dante’s Inferno in English translation and examine its resonance in other creative works – is one of many “signature courses” offered across disciplines at my university. To fulfill core requirements, students must take at least one of these courses, whose objectives include developing the writing and critical-thinking skills evaluated in the research essay. Performing at the highest level on this kind of assignment is a challenge for everyone. But the degree of difficulty increases for STEM majors who have been fed red-meat lines mistakenly suggesting that they will learn to think with rigor, structure, and logic in computer science but not in English.
The Dish 