What makes a business education at Providence College unique is its grounding in the liberal arts. Our business students get a rigorous education in such disciplines as accountancy, finance, marketing and management. But they also have to study philosophy, literature, theology, history, science and fine arts.
From those disciplines they develop the resources to answer the deepest question that ought to motivate four years of college: How do I fashion a life of meaning and purpose? How can I live a life that turns out well? Finding a meaningful career is an important piece of a life that turns out well, but there is more to life than work.
When I talk with employers who hire Providence College graduates, I often hear how much they like the "well-roundedness" of our students. They know accounting, for example, but their thinking and perspective are broader than that precisely because they had a rigorous liberal arts core. They know how to think ethically and act with integrity. They know how to make a distinction between the bottom line and the right thing.
We live in a time when the value of the liberal arts is being questioned on many fronts. More and more people see the main goal of higher education to be workforce development. Education is increasingly seen as a commodity whose value is the return on investment in lifetime earnings. But what we believe at Providence College is that the real ROI is not how much money you make, but what kind of life you lead. •