Sifting through and sifting out: ways employers are testing the college degree. Do employers (and students) expect too much from university education, or too little? From the article: According to the Gallup-Lumina survey, only 11 percent of employers think graduating students have the skills that their businesses need. It’s not as though degree holders are only falling [...]
Public service and religious faith: a way that in life's darkest moments we may yet record the light of goodness. Hi little one, I only gave a hand to bring you out of that prison of rubble. Pardon us if we arrived late; unfortunately you had already stopped breathing. But I want you to know from up above that [...]
The arts of medicine: for those in the healing field, knowing their patients requires more than the natural sciences. From the article: "[T]oday’s medical curriculum teaches new doctors about culture and communication. It is no longer good enough – and probably never was – for a doctor to simply know the appropriate medication to prescribe or diagnostic test [...]
Solve problems, find work, enjoy automation: how technology enhances the value of the humanities. From the article: The final section of this paper reflects on how recent and future advances in artificial intelligence and robotics should shape our thinking about the likely trajectory of occupational change and employment growth. I argue that the interplay between machine and [...]
Forests of philosophy: how our trail-blazing only leads to passing points of rest. No one like the path-finder himself feels the immensity of the forest, or knows the accidentality of his own trails. Columbus, dreaming of the ancient East, is stopped by poor pristine simple America, and gets no farther on that day; and the poets [...]
Therapy and the nurture of nature: how landscape and the natural world foster (from the Greek, therapeia) wholeness. From the article: For many writers, the act of observing nature has healing properties. Amy Liptrot found it from returning time again to the same spot, and feeling more aware each time of “the height of the tide, [...]
Voyages of Discovery: what are our certainties, when we, and what we find, are constantly in flux? A swifter and more obvious stream lays hold of mankind, for although the waters of a river flee, its appearance is the same. However, as the years of a man's life slip away, his appearance is so different [...]
Good books in Damascus: how a library can offer a respite from war and civic disintegration. From the article: I ask [Abdulbaset Alahmar], in a besieged town that has only had access to two aid convoys in nearly four years, wouldn't it make more sense for the library enthusiasts to spend their time looking for [...]
Poetic justice: how a poet may know the justice system, inside and out. From the article: Reginald Dwayne Betts has wanted to be a lawyer for almost as long as he has wanted to be a poet. “Poetry and law have always been intertwined in my mind,” he said recently, “in part because poetry gives me the [...]
A letter about writing: a correspondent argues against the mania for writing Editor’s note: The following letter, printed below in its entirety, was written in response to an earlier post, Against Reading. The editorial staff does not typically sanction the placement of readers’ letters in the monthly Observations, yet found that the author’s candor [...]
