Who runs the world? Not STEM people. Most politicians have a legal and/or liberal background. They may also have a background in STEM - particularly likely in Europe, less so in the US - but you get nowhere in politics without studying and understanding foundational liberal arts skills such as rhetoric, persuasion, and public debate.
The idea that liberal arts majors spend their entire time writing on essentially useless activities - like post-structural critiques of famous literature - is hilariously naive.
Some liberal arts academics do indeed do this, but that's because the liberal arts have pure and applied elements. Just like STEM. And STEM academics also spend their time on wildly impractical theoretical pastimes.
But at the applied end, the liberal arts run the planet. They don't keep the lights on - engineers do that - but they set the policy goals and define the political, economic, moral, and philosophical orthodoxies that virtually everyone conforms to, whether or not they're consciously aware of it.
I suspect that the dichotomy isn't so much 'STEM vs Arts' but 'Accountable vs Unaccountable'. Most STEM fields are accountable to reality and future employers, and law is similarly accountable to rival scholars of law and employers of new lawyers. That makes law a rather noteworthy outlier in the liberal arts.
*in western countries
Do you know the M in STEM stands for 'Mathematics'?
Those fields are in neighborhood of STEM more than old "liberal arts" standard of language, foreign language, art (painting or music) and history. (Note: no ethics or philosophy.)
I’m skeptical that attainment of political power is easily attributed to a good liberal arts education. I think desire for power, some intelligence, and a relaxed relationship with principles go a long way. Well-crafted rhetoric...eh.
I think you're missing my point. In the North American definition of the term, a physics degree is also a liberal arts degree. Physics is a natural science. North American liberal arts colleges offer physics degrees.
Liberal arts education is in contrast to applied or technical educations. For example, aerospace engineering, which is physics applied to a specialized domain.
Your definition of liberal arts seems to be "anything that doesn't involve too much math." Which is a weird kind of snobbery. (I'm speaking as an engineer btw).
ok, yes, STEM students study a little bit liberal arts
> generally not the case that a student of Fine Arts is going to take Calculus
But now you're asking a liberal arts student to study Calculus and derivatives, which are not easy topics and not something that useful in day to day life.
This is a blatantly double standard in your argument. Few STEM students go that deep in liberal arts to the "level of Calculus". It's like asking a STEM student to read Kant.
If you want to add something useful to the mix, try law, ethics (technically a subset of philosophy), logic (as analysis and rationality, manipulation) and acting. Group work can be exercised in any field, therefore including basic management.
How? I can see how calculus is used in quantitative finance, but double-entry bookkeeping predates the invention of calculus.
Many of the liberal arts electives I could choose from (as a physics major) were foundational requirements in that major. For example, in a literature class I took, the instructor was surprised many of us had not also taken Literary Criticism 101.
On the other hand, an English major friend of mine was able to take a physics course nicknamed "Physics for Poets", where rounding g to 10m/s/s was acceptable.
Calculus is a high school subject where I live, at least single variable calculus, it's not that hard.
From wikipedia: "There is no formal definition of liberal arts college".
Here's someone else explaining better than I can: "A bachelor's degree in liberal arts means that the courses you take will be in general areas of study such as philosophy, mathematics, literature, art history, or languages, rather than in applied or specialized fields."
If you think that Biochemistry is a "liberal arts degree" then you've really misunderstood what the above poster was talking about. Biochemistry is a specialized field, and no one would consider that a liberal arts subject.
If it helps, you want to be looking towards degrees like: psychology, business, literature, arts, sociology, women's studies, languages, history, political science... Does this mean these degrees will never touch math? By no means! But it's foolish to think the level of mathematical and technical rigor would be similar to a degree in, say, Physics.
Generally speaking, even a Physics student will take some liberal arts classes as electives, as part of a "liberal arts education"; what we might call well-rounded. But while the physics student might read a few books and find it interesting, and keep that as part of them for the rest of their life... it's generally not the case that a student of Fine Arts is going to take Calculus and occasionally wistfully perform derivatives.