Liberal Education for Specialists: the Programs of the Center for the Study of Liberal Education for Adults.

The connection of liberal studies to professional competence is an enduring concern of adult educators. In the nineteen-fifties, there were very extensive efforts to devise curricula to enhance the technical competence of practicing professionals through programs in natural and social sciences and the humanities. These programs were developed at the Center for the Study of Liberal Education for Adults (CSLEA), which was created in 1951 by the Fund for Adult Education. The problem posed in the dissertation is to establish the original meanings and significant contributions of the programs for specialists. The dissertation is historical in nature and uses primary source materials available in the CSLEA archives at Syracuse University. The programs demonstrate that the forms of liberal education in the modern American university are shaped by elements of the tension between specialization and general education. At the turn of the century, leaders of American universities proposed the ideals of professionalism based upon the application of knowledge to address every problem of human life and work. Since the nineteen-twenties, some adult educators argued along with Whitehead and Dewey for the unity of technical (or professional) and liberal studies. However, instruction in higher education has been criticized often for its intellectually narrow and fragmented character. For the specialists' programs, the intention was to "overlay (not replace) vocational motives with broader social and cultural concerns," as John B. Schwertman, Director of the Center, said. The dissertation examines the outcomes of Schwertman's intention for the evening colleges of the fifties, when there were great expectations for solving the problems of life and work with applied knowledge and liberal education. The programs did not have long lives in the universities and professional associations with which the Center worked. In an intellectual sense, however, the programs represent an advance in the union of liberal and technical instruction. The curricula of the Center's programs foreshadow those of current efforts to employ liberal education not merely as a foundation for a specialty but also as a context for continuing professional achievement.PhDAdult educationUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/160195/1/8422300.pd