Or related field

Even casual readers of the Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed and I don't even know how many blogs and other publications in the field can find tons of verbiage on how beleaguered and deprecated are the "liberal arts." Well, don't I know it. The situation is no joke. Or wouldn't be, except that these philosophers, administrators and purveyors higher education seem not to have noticed that a bachelor's degree in the liberal arts does not qualify their own graduates for employment by the very institutions the represent.

See, I know this because for over a year I have been looking for work in higher education with a lowly bachelor's degree in Political Science—augmented by years of work experience and the fruits of an habitual continuing education that vastly exceed anything presented to me by my beloved Alma Mater.

On top of that, I've been a journalist, a businessman, a manager of men and women, a teacher, a laborer, a designer, a salesman, a customer service ace, a hack writer—even a marketing consultant. And over the years I have read broadly and even deeply in the sciences, the humanities, history and, of course, politics. But it seems my only hope of landing a job in academe is for someone somewhere to decide that "or related field" in the required education statement is so broad it even encompasses political science.

It seems at this remove ironic that I once believed political science was the best academic program on offer. After all, I reasoned—and was told by my favorite professors—poli sci required studies in philosophy, history, sociology, statistics and the law, and relied upon constant reading and the composition of the most lucid prose. Who could hope for a better education in the liberal arts than a political science major? Who, indeed.

And the fact is, I still believe that. By studying poli sci I got in-depth exposure to a truly marvelous range of academic disciplines. Sure, I wish I'd come to understand calculus while at college, and wish my keen interest in the sciences had asserted itself before my late thirties. But I can't fault the political science department for my math-phobic personality nor my late-blooming intellectual hunger.

I can, though, fault the higher education establishment for hewing to a human resources norm that requires narrow studies in specific fields to qualify well-educated individuals to do generalist work in generalist fields. I am extraordinarily qualified for at least ninety percent of the jobs I choose to seek, a competent to perform all of them.

Admittedly, the "extraordinarily qualified" part is largely a result of my vast experience and alert approach to life and work ... but the "competent to perform" part is, as it should be, the product of a sound education in the liberal arts. And it seems to me that institutions in the business of selling a liberal arts education ought to be willing to hire their customers.

By the way—lest anyone thing I'm just picking on colleges and universities, let me also note for the record that I have been very disappointed by "microfiber" cloth; it just hasn't lived up to the hype.