The Future of Work

Traditionally, liberal arts colleges have excelled at preserving and transmitting the wisdom of the past. This traditional role is certainly of deep and abiding value. Yet in today's fast-moving world of "wicked problems," there is a critical need for liberal arts colleges to become more intentionally forward-looking. They need to engage the wider world more actively in envisioning and creating the knowledge needed for the future. In a word, liberal arts colleges must strive to imagine tomorrow. 

Imagining tomorrow,

Entails grappling with the way the expectations of education and work are changing, with even more fundamental transformations to come. From the gig economy to maker spaces to hybrid work models, today's students will experience a working world often dramatically different from that of even a decade ago. Individuals entering the workforce today, too, are asking more of their jobs and careers. They are looking for work that offers flexibility and meaning, opportunities for collaboration and creativity, and the chance to connect their professional goals with their personal values. 

Engaging this emerging world,

Liberal arts colleges are envisioning an education for the future that fosters a greater range of skills and dispositions. Such skills and dispositions range from cognitive capabilities, such as integrative, systems, and design thinking, to ethical judgment to technological literacy to cross-cultural competence. Significantly too, they include personal qualities, such as grit, self-efficacy, facility with ambiguity, a willingness to innovate, and the ability to collaborate and work in teams to solve unscripted problems. 

Responding to this evolving future,

Franklin & Marshall College is beginning a new initiative aimed at liberal arts colleges. The College will be hosting a conference on the topic of "The Liberal Arts and the Future of Work" on June 1-3, 2023. Guided by a common belief in the essential role the liberal arts have in preparing their students for the evolving workplace, we hope to engage and inspire each other in a conversation about our collective efforts. Along with inviting teams of faculty and administrators, the College will host presidents of leading liberal arts colleges to participate in the convening.