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Why I Left the Academy to Join the Academy

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)

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