August 4, 2006

Educating Students to Earn a Living, and to Live

To the Editor:

Patrick Allitt is right to question whether common frameworks guiding American undergraduate education have outlived their usefulness ("Should Undergraduates Specialize?," The Chronicle Review, June 16). The alternatives he proposes, however — specialization for those who know what they want to study and liberal arts for the less focused — are both decidedly inadequate for today's students.

In a volatile, globally interdependent, and