Why Get a Liberal Education? [View all]
It is the “life and breath of medicine.”
*At the same time, as the cost of an undergraduate education skyrockets, the validity of a broad-based liberal education has also come increasingly under fire. People question the value of a liberal arts education in a digital economy compared to the hard, technical skills from the STEM fields in making graduates marketable in today’s world.
The confluence of these two shifts is particularly marked in smaller medical centers like ours at Dartmouth. This raises the question: Does a medical school belong with a liberal arts school? Or are we (as we are sometimes called) an overly expensive trade school that produces “body mechanics” and outside the school’s dedicated mission to liberal education?
As medical school faculty members and administrators, we sought to explore this question.
A Need to Know How to Communicate
Many may be surprised to learn that liberal education is deeply ingrained in medical school curricula. Yes, medical students learn anatomy, physiology, biochemistry and neuroscience, but they also have required courses in ethics, leadership, policy, economics, sociology and psychology.
To succeed at their trade, doctors not only need to have a sophisticated knowledge of biology, they also must master the complex clinical micro—and macro-systems in which their patients live and they work.'>>>
https://news.dartmouth.edu/news/2016/08/why-get-liberal-education
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