The president of Wesleyan University, Michael Roth, had an interesting opinion piece on CNN, “Why Liberal Arts Matter.”

With a science undergraduate degree, an MBA, and many years working as a scientist, in no way do I consider myself a liberal arts sort of fellow. However, I think the liberal arts are important and the prominence of American higher education will suffer if we marginalize the liberal arts.

First, and perhaps most simply, not everybody wants to study science or engineering. Students have aptitudes for different fields of study and those certain fields of study should not be elevated over others. For example, there seems to be a societal tendency to hold medical, legal, or engineering professionals in higher esteem than those from a liberal arts background. However, often we see these same highly esteemed professionals buying art, seeing stage acting, going to poetry readings, and so forth. Maybe not everybody can be a cardiothoracic surgeon, but likewise not everybody can sing Largo al Factotum from “The Barber of Seville.” Or design the next sleek iProduct. Or create content for the History Channel, The Economist, or a plethora of other media outlets. There is great value to society when we have strengths that cover a breadth of fields. If anything, American strength lies in diversity.

Secondly, a liberal arts background provides a great foundation for other fields of study. For example, one university study indicates that students with liberal arts degree taking the LSAT perform remarkably well. Granted the highest performing students had degrees in physics & math, but of the top ten performing degrees, seven of them are those from the world of liberal arts. Additionally, pre-med students studying humanities see reasonable success when it comes to taking the MCAT. In fact students with humanities out-perform (on average) their peers coming from biological and health science backgrounds. Along similar lines, it is reasonable to think that students with a liberal arts background may have greater strengths when it comes to reaching across disciplinary practice areas later in their career. These citations should not be construed as an argument that one should study liberal arts if you want to succeed in medical or law school, but rather to demonstrate that the study of liberal arts should not be ridiculed as pointless fields of study. There is greatness in understanding many things, to be a polymath, a modern day Renaissance Man (or a woman if you are one).

Finally, one could argue that the study of liberal arts is what made the American higher education system the best in the world. Historically American universities have topped international rankings in effectively every metric. Therefore, why should we seek to decrease, or at least deemphasize, studies in liberal arts? I am not one who usually wants to do business as usual just for the sack of complacent consistency. Sometimes, though, organizational precedent is the best thing; if it aint broke, why fix it?

On the one hand, it is all to easy to see that pure science, engineering, business and law are somehow the solutions to American problems and the way forward to maintain global supremacy. On the other hand, it should be readily obvious to our society that there is great value in understanding people, culture, society, history, and tradition. One has to wonder how many ghastly global gaffs the U.S. may have avoided by being a little more literate in liberal arts.