Cutting down on liberal arts will not cause people who originally studied liberal arts to turn to studying science and engineering and devote their intelligence to solving bottleneck problems.

Written by Ren Dagang

On June 24, Professor Zhu Guohua, Dean of the School of International Chinese Language and Culture of East China Normal University, talked about the question of "What is liberal arts" at the school's 2024 graduation ceremony and degree awarding ceremony.

Recently, Professor Zhu Guohua was interviewed by People magazine, saying that for liberal arts students, the mission they shoulder and the possible living space in society still exist and are still worth pursuing.

When talking about "mission" and "living space", Dean Zhu Guohua actually made two corresponding conclusions in his previous graduation speech: First, the liberal arts cultivate critical thinking, aesthetic ability, recognition of the diversity of experience, and humanistic care, which will benefit the entire society; second, Professor Zhu emphasized that some liberal arts students are better than science and engineering students, such as Qu Jing, Liu Qiangdong and "my students", so everyone here should have confidence.

01

I fully agree with Professor Zhu's speech, but it did not dispel the realistic concerns of many liberal arts students. The most direct issue is employment. It is obvious that liberal arts students have fewer job opportunities than science and engineering students if you go to the job market. The employment reality makes Professor Zhu a little embarrassed.

In my previous article, "Artificial Intelligence Iterates Everything, and Liberal Arts Students Will Be the "Last Survivors"," I answered the current concerns of liberal arts students from the perspective of industrial development. My conclusion is:

——The extension of leisure time has created opportunities for the development of liberal arts.But today's liberal arts education is still a mixture of the imperial examination era and the three industrial revolutions.

In this article I pointed out:

——A university liberal arts graduate, even if he has a diploma from a prestigious university, can only write a so-called paper that is difficult to understand, but cannot write a high-quality, unique thousand-word essay, cannot come up with a few jingles, cannot draft a speech for the leader with a little preparation, cannot make an impromptu speech, and speak fluently and logically. Then, what is the meaning of this diploma except to deceive HR?

In this article, I am almost the first one in China and even in the world to put forward a concept:Liberal arts industry.

A very wise fan commented:

——We must distinguish between “problems of liberal arts” and “problems of Chinese liberal arts”.

What Professor Zhu Guohua faces is precisely the "problem of Chinese liberal arts", and what Chinese liberal arts students face is not the problem of liberal arts, but the "problem of Chinese liberal arts".

I don’t know how many countries in the world have liberal arts teaching like China, with so many artificial restrictions and writing “papers” as the only purpose.Apart from the thesis, nothing else matters?

Technological advances are leaving huge space for liberal arts students, it just depends on whether they can take it.

02

Recently, the State Council issued a policy to stimulate consumption, "Opinions on Promoting the High-Quality Development of Service Consumption", which involves industries including: catering, accommodation, residential services, housekeeping services, elderly care and childcare, culture, tourism and sports, education and training, digital consumption, green consumption, healthy consumption, etc.

It can be seen from this document that in order to solve the employment problem, the primary and secondary industries can only provide limited opportunities, and we still have to rely more on the tertiary industry.

But how many of the industries mentioned in this document require talents from science and engineering fields to be competent? On the contrary,Most of the industries mentioned above are industries that liberal arts students can enter and are more competent in.

If you still have some memories, you will remember that before the epidemic, China's catering and accommodation, cultural tourism and sports, education and training, digital consumption, etc. were once booming. The education and training industry alone has solved the employment of tens of millions of people.

If these industries can flourish and provide employment for tens of millions of people, there will be no problem at all.

The above-mentioned industries are also the majority of what I call the "liberal arts industry".

Of course, these industries may not produce the richest people, but they are very likely to produce super-rich people. These industries use "critical thinking, aesthetic ability, recognition of diverse experiences, and humanism" as one of the basic "skills", and specific work skills can be acquired with training ranging from a few days to several months.

03

Is today's higher education ready for the booming development of the liberal arts industry? I think it is still lacking.

The first is the misjudgment of direction.

Now, because it is difficult to find jobs with arts majors, while it is easy to find jobs with science and engineering majors, and the bottleneck problem needs to be solved, there is a proposal to cut arts majors and expand science and engineering majors. This will lead to a big misunderstanding.

Cutting down on liberal arts will not cause people who originally studied liberal arts to turn to studying science and engineering and devote their intelligence to solving bottleneck problems.

With the advancement of artificial intelligence and intelligent production line automation, a large number of people will disappear from assembly lines, factory management and general scientific research positions, and it is science and engineering students who will face unemployment. Expanding science and engineering while cutting liberal arts will not allow us to see the future trend of industrial development, but may create more students who will be unemployed upon graduation.

Solving the bottleneck problem requires top talents. But this is something that can only be found by chance. What colleges and universities can provide is only an educational and teaching environment that can be found by chance, providing soil for the natural growth of talents.

The second is failed teaching.

Over the past 30 years, the standards for liberal arts education and teaching have completely moved toward "scientific research", which is equivalent to moving toward science and engineering. Reading, studying, teaching, and writing articles are actually this "base" and that "project". Literary scholars speak like contractors, which is completely contrary to the original intention of liberal arts education and teaching. As a result, the students taught are neither good at literature nor martial arts, and are gradually drifting away from social needs.

Again, it’s a failure of physical space.

Science and engineering develop the ability to deal with "things", and liberal arts, in all its forms, are about dealing with "people".

However, with the expansion of university enrollment, Chinese universities have built new campuses and moved their schools to the countryside, causing liberal arts students to lose contact with citizens and society, and they can only deal with abstract "people" in books.

Many college students probably haven’t spoken more than 20 words to local citizens in four years. As a result, they have neither the idealism that intellectuals should have nor the “down-to-earth” approach of ordinary people.

In addition, social activities are completely networked - but online social activities are completely different from offline social activities - many students are good at online social activities, but they are also socially anxious offline. Once they encounter the work environment after graduation, they are neither right nor wrong, and it is difficult for them to adapt in the long run.

04

In my article "Artificial Intelligence Will Iterate Everything, and Liberal Arts Students Will Be the 'Last Survivors'", I have explained in detail that in the near future, liberal arts students who deal with "people" will have more room for survival than science and engineering students who deal with "things". I will not repeat it here, and friends who are interested can take a look.

What I want to say further is that based on "correction" and future prospects, some necessary changes should be made at the moment.

I think that all liberal arts students should develop the ability to speak.Liberal arts students face "people". If you don't speak or are not good at speaking, how can others feel your insights, cultivation, knowledge and methods? It is said that there are far more Indian executives than Chinese executives in Silicon Valley. A key factor is that Indians are good at "speaking".

Debate competitions were popular in Chinese universities for a while, and many celebrities emerged. More importantly, debate competitions cultivated a generation of college students who are good at speaking. But in general, Chinese universities pay little attention to the cultivation of "speaking" skills, except for speech competitions, debates and recitations organized by students themselves, and there are basically no compulsory courses on how to "speak".

Perhaps in the eyes of education leaders, speaking ability is a trivial skill, a trivial detail, not worth mentioning, and not easy to assess "objectively", so it is better to do less and avoid trouble.

But the reality is that in the workplace, we often encounter problems such as how to make impromptu speeches appropriately, how to interrupt randomly, how to get support when reporting work orally, how to impress others when speaking at meetings, how to get closer to unfamiliar customers to discuss business, how to proceed and retreat in business negotiations, how to arrange various tasks for subordinates to make work progress smoothly, etc.The moment they walk out of the school gate, basically all liberal arts students feel empty-headed and confused.

The vast majority of universities in China attach great importance to training students' ability to write "papers", and regard this as a prerequisite or even the only condition for doing "scientific research". They only see "papers" and nothing else. As a result, the humanities field is flooded with "garbage papers".

I have absolutely no intention of belittling or disrespecting papers. A real paper can lead to changes in basic concepts, shifts in social trends, and the introduction of public policies.

but,If the humanities are to be oriented towards society rather than research institutions, then in terms of developing the ability to "write", just having "papers" is probably far from enough.

Society needs a variety of writing styles. I believe that a liberal arts university graduate should master writing skills that include but are not limited to: writing letters, writing IOUs, drafting speeches, leadership speeches or work reports for meetings of thirty to fifty people, drafting general business contracts, drafting research reports, as well as writing press releases, thousand-character essays in which facts and arguments complement each other, travel notes, short play scripts, video copywriting, and so on.

In the past, these skills may have been spread across different liberal arts majors, such as news releases being reserved for journalism departments and commercial contracts being reserved for law departments. However, in the face of drastic social change, what profession is there that will never change? If you are a Chinese major, does that mean you can only write literary essays? Is drafting a commercial contract a traitor?

05

The liberal arts industry in the post-industrial era requires a large number of various talents, eccentrics, and specialized people, but China's liberal arts education is mostly stuck in the "professional" rut of the industrial era and is still producing a steady stream of compliant and appropriate screws, resulting in an increasing disconnect between education and social needs.

This is an obstacle to the development of the liberal arts industry, but also a huge opportunity for the development of the liberal arts industry.

The campus should be lively, not dead. While learning book knowledge, there should be all kinds of debates, polemics, and speeches, big and small; every liberal arts student should conduct various serious writing training on self-media to find out what social needs are and how to gain social influence; various types of simulated negotiations should be carried out; we should go out of campus to government departments, companies, communities, rural areas, nursing homes and other places to discover social needs and business opportunities, rather than the traditional humble "internship"; we should gradually learn to cooperate across disciplines, especially with science and engineering students...

You see, even on campus, liberal arts students are not without work to do, let alone in society. Don't wait for others to save you. Those who save themselves will save others.