(Source: "Guangming Daily" 2026-01-20)
The liberal arts covers many disciplines in the humanities and social sciences and plays a key role in cultural inheritance, social development and the construction of independent knowledge systems. How liberal arts education breaks through traditional boundaries, responds to the propositions of the times while inheriting the core of the humanistic spirit, and cultivates compound innovative talents is a cutting-edge topic in the current higher education reform.
Integrated symbiosis and technological empowerment: the future direction of “new liberal arts”
As the scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation accelerate, the application of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data in the fields of economic people's livelihood and social governance has become increasingly popular, profoundly changing production relations and knowledge structures. The traditional discipline division system with clear boundaries and strong independence is gradually unable to meet the objective needs of human beings to explore complex scientific phenomena and respond to major global governance challenges; the trend towards "problem orientation" and "open cooperation" under the guidance of a diverse knowledge and skill system has become an important part of the adjustment of the discipline layout of higher education in various countries around the world. The modern industrial development model driven by technological innovation requires a large number of science and engineering professionals to engage in technology research and development, product innovation or infrastructure construction. The scale of demand is showing a growing trend as global competition continues to escalate. In the wave of intelligence, liberal arts education not only faces the challenges of scientific research paradigm innovation and research boundary expansion, but also faces the problem of how to further enrich the education supply model and promote course content and teaching methods to better adapt to the new needs of society.
In order to better respond to the changing trends within and outside the education system, in terms of talent training, liberal arts education needs to actively carry out interdisciplinary collaboration, based on the classic knowledge framework of this major, moderately integrate technological innovation and application-oriented teaching content such as data analysis and artificial intelligence, enhance liberal arts students' scientific general knowledge foundation and understanding and application of emerging technological forms, cultivate compound talents with both humanistic literacy and technical practical ability, and broaden the employment channels and employment channels of liberal arts majors. Career prospects; in terms of academic research, liberal arts majors need to strengthen the relevance and integration of research topics with common social issues and industrial research and development needs. In response to complex real-life problems emerging in frontier fields such as digital economy, biotechnology, and public health, they should promptly explore emerging cross-research fields such as digital humanities, algorithm ethics, and AI governance. They should explore new development opportunities while deeply participating in innovative practices, and demonstrate the potential value of liberal arts knowledge theoretical systems in technological innovation and social progress.
Continue to improve the organizational system of universities and enhance the adaptability of traditional liberal arts
Most traditional liberal arts education focuses on cultivating general skills such as critical thinking, communication, and cultural literacy, which do not directly correspond to specific technical positions. The employment paths are relatively broad and vague. The integration of science and technology and humanities in the curriculum system is not high, making it difficult to guide students from Understand the application scenarios and development trends of emerging technologies from a humanistic perspective; in terms of scientific research output, the research cycle of reflection on social issues, cultural inheritance or theoretical construction carried out by the liberal arts is long, the value contribution is difficult to be quantitatively evaluated, and the social perception is lower than that of product patents and other highly effective results. In order to break through the existing shortcomings in the construction of "new liberal arts", it is necessary to improve the system design and organizational structure and better realize the organizational functions of technology integration and empowerment.
The employment demand pattern in the smart era is highly influenced by technology. The skill system iterates quickly and employment forms are flexible and diverse. This has impacted traditional liberal arts education in many aspects such as teaching content, training goals, and career development. Promoting innovation in the degree system and exploring and promoting degree programs that intersect liberal arts and emerging technologies are important strategies for higher education at the moment. This type of program usually takes the form of a double degree or minor degree, allowing students to take core courses in liberal arts and emerging technologies at the same time to build a multidisciplinary knowledge system. For example, the "artificial intelligence + liberal arts" project released by many universities at home and abroad enables students to master core technologies such as natural language processing and machine learning while integrating classic knowledge in this field into social practice, enhancing their comprehensive application and understanding of emerging technologies, and making up for shortcomings in employment competitiveness.
The traditional liberal arts free exploratory scientific research organization model is relatively loose. In order to make full use of emerging technologies to empower the exploration and breakthrough of major issues in the humanities and social sciences, well-known research universities at home and abroad promote the construction of liberal arts laboratories, promote interdisciplinary exchanges and cooperation through professional organizations, and enhance the effectiveness and pertinence of liberal arts research. On the one hand, liberal arts laboratories can integrate scattered academic resources and promote the integration of information technology and experimental teaching. For example, the digital humanities research centers of Peking University, Stanford University, and Cambridge University use digital tools to improve traditional text analysis and interpretation research methods and explore innovative ways of liberal arts methodology in the smart era; on the other hand, they are similar to science and engineering laboratories. Similarly, liberal arts laboratories also have application-oriented functions that promote the industrialization and socialization of research results. For example, the New York University Urban Systems Laboratory works with researchers, policymakers, designers, and communities to jointly create data-driven tools, topics, and transformative strategies to strengthen scientific dissemination of social issues in urban development and improve decision-making capabilities.
Beyond the scope of tools, expand the boundaries of liberal arts research
Technological progress and the development of "new liberal arts" are not a simple relationship between empowerment and empowerment, nor will they form competitive opposition due to limited resource constraints. The two have always been in a dynamic and complementary state in the long-term process of economic and social development: the humanistic spirit provides a directional reference for technological progress, and technological tools help liberal arts research expand boundaries and improve efficiency. In a future with increasing global challenges, the development of "new liberal arts" should further clarify its unique value in technological progress and modern social governance, especially its irreplaceability in cultivating future core competencies, solving complex social problems, and inheriting human civilization. Through the two-wheel drive of value return and technological empowerment, it can not only adapt to the trend of technological industry changes, but also avoid simply becoming an application scenario of new technologies.
The development of technology-enabled "new liberal arts" needs to go beyond the scope of tool application, promote the organic integration of emerging technologies and discipline construction needs from the concept and connotation level, and transform technological advantages into momentum for the development of liberal arts majors. First, we should give full play to the resource integration advantages of emerging technologies. For example, digital technology can save massive research materials on literature, history and philosophy, and use fragmented information originally belonging to different disciplines to describe abstract and complex social phenomena and further explore their underlying laws; second, we should give full play to the platform communication advantages of emerging technologies to use intelligent Translation and open digital education resource platforms reduce language barriers for liberal arts academic exchanges and promote cross-regional exchanges of ideas and mutual learning among civilizations. Third, they can leverage the real-time and interactive advantages of emerging technologies to quickly respond to society’s objective needs and changing trends in liberal arts education through real-time data transmission and analysis and processing.
To reshape the social functional system of liberal arts, we also need to build a classification evaluation system and resource guarantee system that reflect the development needs of liberal arts and encourage ideological innovation and social contribution. In terms of top-level design, explore the establishment of a credit mutual recognition system that promotes the cross-integration of liberal arts disciplines, liberal arts, science, engineering, agriculture and medicine, and enhance the value contribution of liberal arts majors in the process of cultivating complex and innovative talents. For some smaller disciplines with unique cultural value and "unpopular science" majors, a development guarantee mechanism should be constructed according to their discipline rules. In terms of the scientific research evaluation system, a more inclusive academic ecology should be created and the establishment of a cultural and cultural education system should be explored. The recognition standards for social service-oriented achievements of science majors include establishing a reasonable recognition reward system and academic achievement exchange mechanism for original theoretical ideas, policy consultation reports, cultural and creative products and other related achievements; in terms of resource supporting mechanisms, through the construction of a liberal arts big data sharing platform, the establishment of liberal arts key laboratories and other related measures, the practical effectiveness of the integration of industry and education, science and education in liberal arts majors will be further enhanced, and the scientific and technological vision and innovation potential of talent training will be improved.
(Author: Xue Xinlong, associate researcher at the Education and Open Economic Research Center of the National Institute for Opening up, w88 casino)
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