One of the contemporary issues in Education, in general, and Engineering Education, in particular, is the role and importance of Liberal Arts studies relative to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) studies. At one extreme is the concern whether liberal arts degrees are relatively worthless.  A question often asked is: What is someone with a degree in English literature, for example, going to do with it, besides teach? In this context, it is interesting to quote and note Bernard Shaw’s quip: “Those who can do, those who can’t, teach”.

There is a new book by George Anders titled “You Can Do Anything: The Surprising Power of a ‘Useless’ Liberal Arts Education”, which brings out the true value of liberal arts studies.  Typically, “a liberal arts education involves the study of the natural sciences (including mathematics), the social sciences, and the humanities”. Many assert the primacy of the STEM fields, while for humanistic studies, “politicians belittle them, parents urge their children to avoid them, and students choose them as majors.” While they do not explicitly provide training in a job skill, employers increasingly are seeking the problem-solving and critical-thinking abilities that these majors bring to their jobs.

Fareed Zakaria, a columnist for The Washington Post and host of “Fareed Zakaria GPS” on CNN, in his recent book titled “In Defense of a Liberal Education” has written: “Public officials have cautioned against pursuing degrees like art and history, which are seen as expensive luxuries in today’s world. It is contended that: A liberal education is irrelevant, and technical training is the new path forward. It is the only way, we are told, to ensure that Americans survive in an age defined by technology and shaped by global competition.”. He points out “the word liberal in liberal arts and liberal education does not refer to the opposite of conservative; it refers to free, the opposite of constrained and subjugated, an education for free citizens.”

Steve Jobs famously said in 2010, “It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough. It’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields the results that make our hearts sing.”

“Liberal education is learning for its own sake; it does not set out to prepare students for a specific career. This is the point that critics debate today: What is the value of an education that does not explicitly set out to prepare students for a profession?”

Recent data suggests the opposite to be true. Liberal arts graduates are eminently employable. In the last several months, several tech moguls have publicly come out in support of liberal arts graduates. “We don’t need more STEM majors. We need more STEM majors with liberal arts training”, they say.

If STEM subjects can be understood as the “‘how’” question (i.e., how it works), then the humanities must subsequently be perceived as the “‘why’” question (i.e., why something works). Recently, the addition of Arts to STEM to create STEAM is intended to incorporate creative thinking and applied arts in real situations. “In other words, STEM and STEAM reflect real life. Critics of the STEM model point out that much of it is designed to get students “good jobs” without preparing them for jobs that do not exist yet.

In sum, it may be said that while STEM prepares students for Livelihood, STEAM prepares them for Life; while STEM is about hard skills, STEAM is about, in addition, soft skills.