One view on U.S. universities

I enjoyed reading Tania Budihardjo's article on choosing a college in the United States (The Jakarta Post, Aug. 25). Having undergone the same process a few years ago, I share her experiences as well and I think her article was very informative for Indonesians who plan undergraduate study in the United States. However, I disagree with her assertion regarding the small liberal arts colleges as a place for "ivory tower intellectuals who were not only strange, but also unmarketable and that going into a university is preferable to going to a liberal arts college.

I spent my undergraduate years in a small liberal arts college and I believed that this experience has helped me develop a different worldview than those who went to big universities. Because in a liberal arts college one has to take classes from various disciplines (such as economics, philosophy, politics, and history), one would be able to look at a given situation from an interdisciplinary perspective, not a narrow one like if one attends a big university, in which one has to specialize into a discipline (such as business or engineering) immediately.

I believe a person who approaches a given problem through an interdisciplinary scope would have a deeper understanding about it, which would lead into better decision-making. It is no surprise then that many of today's world leaders are products of small liberal arts college (for example, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan).

In conclusion, one should not dismiss liberal arts college as a place for "left-brainers" because in the long run it produces excellent leaders that are in short supply in our world today. True, the cost of attending one could be quite expensive, but given the track record of these colleges, it is an investment worth making.

ALEXANDER ARIFIANTO, Surabaya