The Association of American Colleges & Universities

respect to competing arguments, and employ moral imagination, while cultivating personal and social responsibility. These skills and the disposition to civic involvement and lifelong learning cultivated by a liberal education are indispensable to the creation of a more just and inclusive society. They also offer the best means to the democratic end of universal access to opportunity at the heart of the American Dream. Evidence from AAC&U’s most recent round of employer surveys, including 501 employers and 500 HR managers, confirms that employers regard a graduate’s ability to think critically, communicate clearly, solve complex problems in real-world settings within diverse groups, and act ethically as more important than their undergraduate major. In a globally interdependent, multicultural world, it is precisely because employers place a premium on innovation in response to rapid change that they focus on these student experiences rather than narrow technical training. If the learning outcomes of a liberal education correspond to the proficiencies required for engaged citizenship and for the workplace of today and tomorrow - as educators and employers agree they do - then liberal education can unleash the potential of those otherwise most likely to be excluded from full participation in civic and economic life. Indeed, there is an equity imperative mandating that all colleges and universities take direct aim at educational disparities and patterns of systemic disadvantage - especially those resulting from historical and contemporary effects of racism. If higher education is to emerge strengthened by the ongoing crisis touched off by the COVID-19 pandemic, we must intentionally prioritize quality, equity, and inclusion in any of the possible futures ahead of us. Our ability to fulfill the promises we have made to our students—and to fulfill the broader democratic purposes of American higher education—will depend on whether we hold fast to these shared values. At this moment of unprecedented disruption, there is opportunity to reimagine and revolutionize higher education. AAC&U publication, What Liberal Education Looks Like, expresses the vision of liberal education that animates AAC&U’s work with member campuses of all types and sizes across the higher education landscape.