The Old Liberal-Arts Messaging Isn’t Working
For more than a decade, liberal arts education has occupied a strange and increasingly precarious place within higher education. Institutionally celebrated, culturally respected, and central to the identity of many colleges and universities, it has nevertheless come under growing pressure as students and families question its cost, practicality, and return on investment.
That pressure is not just rhetorical—it’s data-driven. Between 2012 and 2020, enrollment in humanities majors such as English and history fell sharply across a range of institutions, including declines of nearly half at some universities and even steeper drops in others. And trends towards career and tech-focused degrees have, in many ways, put liberal arts education on the defensive over the past decade or so, forcing institutions to justify whether it still has a place in this modern economy.
Liberal arts aren’t outdated. But they are often not explained properly or marketed in ways that fit our current education and workforce landscape.
For years, liberal arts education has been described in terms that are philosophically sound but increasingly difficult to translate: “well-rounded education,” “learn how to think,” “explore ideas broadly.” These ideas still matter—but they often fail to land with prospective students who are trying to connect academic choices to tangible career pathways.
As a result, institutions speak in abstractions while students and families look for clarity: how this major leads to that kind of work, how these skills translate into opportunity, how adaptable a degree will be over time.
The question isn’t whether these programs have value, but how institutions can better connect liberal arts education with tangible outcomes that resonate with Gen Z and Gen Alpha.
Tangible Ways to Market a Liberal Arts Education Today
Translate Majors Into Skills
One of the most persistent challenges in marketing liberal arts education is that disciplines are often described in terms of subject matter rather than capability.
History becomes “the study of the past” rather than training in pattern recognition and contextual analysis. Communications is reduced to media and messaging rather than strategic storytelling and audience understanding. Political science is framed around institutions and government, even though it develops skills in persuasion, analytical reasoning, and decision-making within complex systems.
A big, specific, outcome-based value of liberal arts education (definitely one “well-rounded” doesn’t cover) is learning how to think.
In a blog titled, “The Future-Proof Value of a Liberal Arts Education in the Age of AI,” author and marketer David Meerman Scott writes, ”Rather than teaching a specific set of technical skills that could become obsolete tomorrow, a liberal arts program teaches you how to think. Students learn how to ask the right questions. They learn how to synthesize information, spot patterns, and make connections across disciplines. Liberal arts teaches how to write clearly, speak persuasively, and understand human behavior.”
He makes another important distinction in this piece. These aren’t “soft” skills. The abilities to think critically, problem-solve, and understand human behavior are essential for success, and liberal arts studies excel at developing these skills.
Christa Acampora, the Dean of the University of Virginia’s College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, echoed this in a late 2025 talk, while also acknowledging how the number of liberal arts majors has dropped from 49% to 35% at UVA over the past decade.
“Ultimately, the liberal arts teach us so much about key features of human existence, including our capacities to seek and understand knowledge, to discern fact from fiction, the real from the fake, and to explore what is good for us to do and how to live together,” she said. “There is enduring value in how the liberal arts and sciences enable us to realize beauty and imagination, to understand human creativity and meaning, and to discern the patterns in nature that are also relevant for discovery.”
We’re sharing these quotes because they’re excellent examples of how institutions can frame and communicate liberal arts values.
Show Career Outcomes
If the first challenge is translation, the second is proof.
Students and families increasingly want to see evidence of where a liberal arts education can lead—not just in first jobs, but across long-term professional trajectories. They want examples they can recognize: alums working in consulting, nonprofit leadership, UX research, healthcare administration, marketing strategy, public policy, entrepreneurship, and dozens of other fields that rely on communication, analysis, and adaptability.
Too often, institutions rely on generalized claims about versatility without making those outcomes visible. But flexibility becomes much more compelling when students can actually see how graduates have navigated changing industries, evolving roles, and unexpected opportunities over time.
That visibility matters because today’s students aren’t just choosing a major. They’re trying to assess future resilience in an economy where career paths are increasingly nonlinear.
Some institutions are already making this connection more explicit. For example, a Benedictine College alum feature highlights how liberal arts graduates are finding clear demand for their skills in tech environments—where adaptability, communication, and cross-disciplinary thinking are increasingly valued.
The strongest liberal arts marketing doesn’t present career outcomes as a single predetermined track. It shows how graduates build durable skills that transfer across industries and evolve with the labor market.
Align Messaging Across the Institution
The final challenge is internal consistency.
Effective liberal arts marketing depends on alignment across academics, career services, and admissions messaging. When these functions communicate different versions of the value proposition, students receive fragmented signals about what a liberal arts education is actually preparing them for.
Alignment doesn’t require simplifying the mission of liberal arts education. It requires making its outcomes more legible across every student touchpoint.
That means connecting classroom learning to skill development, skill development to career pathways, and career pathways to real-world examples that students can recognize and trust.
Without that coherence, even strong institutions risk leaving students to do the interpretive work on their own.
From Value to Visibility
At its core, the challenge facing liberal arts education today isn’t a lack of relevance, but a communication gap.
Many colleges and universities already develop the kinds of capabilities students will need across industries and careers: communication, analysis, adaptability, ethical reasoning, and the ability to navigate complexity. The challenge is to make those outcomes more visible, tangible, and consistent in how institutions present themselves to prospective students and families.
That work matters not only because enrollment markets are more competitive, but because the broader economy is changing in ways that reshape how these skills are understood and valued.
The AI Economy is Shifting the Narrative and Making Liberal Arts…More Valuable Than Ever
As AI systems take on more of the work of production, analysis, and information processing, the definition of “valuable work” is beginning to shift in ways that affect how all academic disciplines—including the liberal arts —are understood.
That shift doesn’t change what liberal arts education teaches. But it does change how clearly those capabilities map to the kinds of work students will enter after graduation.
What happens when the skills the liberal arts have always centered become the same skills the economy is increasingly organized around?
Need help translating your messaging into action? The Parish Group can help. For nearly 40 years, we’ve partnered with liberal arts colleges and universities to help them clarify their strengths, communicate meaningful student outcomes, and attract students who are the right fit for their mission and community.
