The question of whether our government should promote science and technology or the liberal arts in higher education isn't an either/or proposition(命題),although the current emphasis on preparing young Americans for STEM（science, technology, engineering, maths）-related fields can make it seem that way.

The liberal arts in higher education help enrich students' spiritual life

Simultaneously, the liberal arts become more important than ever.

Learning to express ideas well in both writing and speech, knowing how to find information, and knowing how to do research are all solid background skills for a wide variety of roles, and such training is more important than any particular major in a liberal arts college

Students majoring in liberal arts usually have difficulty securing a job.

What does the author think a liberal arts college should focus on

The creative process has always been accepted as the source of all important work in the arts, but we should not think the creativity plays a role only in the arts.

It serves as a guide to arts and commerce.

Since 2003 the small, elite liberal arts school in Brunswick, Maine, has boosted the proportion of so-called under-represented minority students in entering freshman classes from 8% to 13%.

The prestige of its liberal arts programs

to promote the teaching of literature and the arts in an effort to make the case for democratic freedoms.

Fashion is often regarded as a pursuit of beauty, and some cherished fashion's trivial relationship to the fine arts.

Nearly half of high-earning, college-graduate parents enrolled their children in arts classes before they were 5, compared with one-fifth of low-income, less-educated parents.

Of families earning less than $30,000, 59% of children have done sports, 37% have volunteered and 41 % have taken arts classes.

Travel was arduous and costly throughout the period, possible only for a privileged class—the same that produced gentlemen scientists, authors, antique experts, and patrons of the arts.