After twenty years on the college level I left to be part of a community of people deeply committed to learning. What? Reword to make sections of what has declined in the university studying the liberal arts makes you a better citizen studying the liberal arts makes you more empathetic and compassionate studying the liberal arts teaches you critical-thinking skills studying the liberal arts makes you a capable communicator, in speech and writing knowledge is good for its own sake studying the liberal arts makes life richer a liberal education is meant to teach you what the good life is and equip you to live it "When properly pursued, they constitute something close to a way of life: a set of practices of inquiry conducted by people who share space and time with one another, whose conversations are extended and embodied. If you want to understand the value of a liberal education, in a very real sense you have to be there." ( Alan Jacobs)