The most recent offender is Liberal Arts, which was written and directed by television star Josh Radnor and opened on September 14. The main character Jesse (also played by Radnor) is a former liberal-arts student whose life is a mess. He works a boring, dead-end job as a college admissions counselor. His girlfriend has just left him. He doesn't even have the wherewithal to stop a random stranger from stealing his clothes at a public Laundromat. With nothing else to do, Jesse travels to his alma mater to attend the retirement dinner of his mentor Prof. Peter Hoberg (Richard Jenkins) only to discover that the man that he has long admired is in bad shape as well. Hoberg is lost; he makes a big fuss about retiring before realizing that teaching is all he has and unsuccessfully begs to get his old job back. Jesse does find some solace in the company of undergraduate liberal arts major Zibby (Elizabeth Olsen), who makes her romantic feelings towards the much older Jesse quite obvious early on. The audience then gets to witness the travails of three characters whose stunted social skills and immature inclinations leave them ill-equipped to deal with life's problems. The film strongly implies that their common fascination with the subjects they study—their love of music, books, and intellectual thought—is partly to blame for their predicaments.

Hello I Must Be Going, a romantic dramedy starring Melanie Lynskey and Christopher Abbott, also opened this month. While the film is not overtly about the field of liberal arts, it nevertheless hints that this track of study is not adequate preparation for the real world. The protagonist Amy (Lynskey) is a former aspiring photographer who neglected completing her master's degree in order to marry a hot-shot New York entertainment lawyer. After her husband cheats on her and then asks for a divorce—at one point he tells her that he wanted to be with someone who was successful—Lynskey finds herself living with her parents in the same community she grew up in, too depressed to leave the house and lacking any sort of prospects. She bides the time by having an affair with 19-year-old actor Jeremy (Abbott) who secretly hates acting and aspires to write a novel. The backdrop of their romance is a rich Connecticut suburb filled with lawyers and investment bankers, making the misfit lovers' lack of regard for their future all the more pronounced. The pair has no interest in facing the question of what comes next until a turn of events forces them to confront what the rest of their lives will hold.

What gives? Why are so many works perpetuating the stereotype that liberal arts programs cater to Peter Pan boys and girls and sad-sack professors, none of whom have the emotional intelligence to deal with life's problems? Part of it could be recession-era scapegoating. And part of it is that the cultural heroes of the moment are largely start-up kings like Mark Zuckerbergs and Steve Jobses who dropped out of college to pursue fortune. You can see similar strains of thought in Scott Gerber's recent Atlantic piece critiquing the liberal arts curriculum for inadequately preparing entrepreneurs.