Liberal Arts Colleges What Is a Liberal Arts College
What Is "Liberal Arts"?
by Staff Writers
Published on June 9, 2020 · Updated on Apr 26, 2022
Prepare to start your journey?
- A broad field of study, liberal arts comprises the humanities, arts, and sciences.
- Liberal arts education boasts a long history, beginning in ancient Greece.
- A liberal arts degree fosters key skills, like critical thinking and communication.
- Liberal arts colleges promote general education and artistic problem-solving.
Ask 10 people to define the term "liberal arts," and you'll probable get 10 different answers. Is math a liberal fine art? What about biological science or chemistry? Although the liberal arts definition has evolved over fourth dimension, present the field comprises four major areas of study: the arts, humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences.
Despite recent drops in the percent of liberal arts degree-holders, liberal arts majors remain popular amid college students in the U.S., particularly amid acquaintance degree-seekers.
If yous're considering pursuing a liberal arts caste or attending a liberal arts college, and then you lot'll need to empathize exactly what y'all'll be studying and prioritizing in your teaching.
A Liberal Arts Definition and History
The various fields that make upward the liberal arts today accept their origin in ancient Hellenic republic. They were a way to prepare men to make decisions for their metropolis-state. Civic participation required grooming in rhetoric, philosophy, arithmetic, and grammer. The aboriginal Romans built on the Greek model, naming it humanitas, or "human being nature or civilization."
In the medieval era, scholars divided the vii liberal arts into the trivium — grammar, logic, and rhetoric — and the quadrivium — mathematics, music, geometry, and astronomy. Renaissance humanists resurrected the Roman studia humanitatis, or "studies of humanity," in their educational organization, which emphasized rhetoric, history, and moral philosophy.
Today, liberal arts includes majors in the humanities, arts, social sciences, and natural sciences.
Prominent universities like Oxford and Cambridge taught a liberal arts curriculum, which early American institutions of college learning — including Harvard and Yale — adopted every bit well.
The Yale Report of 1828 defended the value of a liberal arts instruction, asserting that "the basis work of a thorough education must exist broad, and deep, and solid." Rather than emphasizing vocational or technical knowledge, the report argued, the liberal arts should teach broad skills, such as how to clarify information, build and evaluate arguments, and communicate effectively.
These core skills still brand upward the foundation of liberal arts educational activity. Today, liberal arts includes majors in the humanities, arts, social sciences, and natural sciences — all fields that help students build disquisitional thinking, communication, and problem-solving skills.
What Is a Liberal Arts Degree?
Many conflate liberal arts with the humanities, simply in reality a liberal arts degree is a broad term that includes majors in not only the humanities merely also the arts, social sciences, and natural sciences.
Examples of humanities liberal arts majors are English, history, philosophy, communications, and foreign languages, while arts majors include subjects like music, pattern, theater, and painting.
Some schools even offer a liberal arts major, in which students tin can pursue an interdisciplinary course of study.
In the social sciences, majors in political scientific discipline, economics, psychology, sociology, and anthropology would authorize as liberal arts degrees. And in the natural sciences, a liberal arts degree could be a major in biological science, mathematics, chemistry, environmental scientific discipline, or physics.
At many universities, the College of Arts and Sciences grants liberal arts degrees. Liberal arts as well makes upwards the basis for most general educational activity requirements, which promote the platonic of wide-based training in several disciplines. Some schools even offer a liberal arts major, in which students tin can pursue an interdisciplinary course of written report.
Ultimately, a liberal arts degree trains students to recall critically and communicate their ideas. According to Princeton's Office of Admission, "By exploring issues, ideas, and methods beyond the humanities and the arts, and the natural and social sciences, [liberal arts majors] will learn to read critically, write cogently, and think broadly."
What Is a Liberal Arts Higher?
While many colleges and universities grant liberal arts degrees, a liberal arts higher offers a focused liberal arts instruction. These colleges generally emphasize small class sizes and a curriculum centered on the humanities, arts, social sciences, and natural sciences.
Like students earning a liberal arts caste at a research institution, students at liberal arts colleges must fulfill general didactics requirements that emphasize critical thinking, problem-solving, and reasoning skills.
[Liberal arts] colleges generally emphasize pocket-sized course sizes and a curriculum centered on the humanities, arts, social sciences, and natural sciences.
Maine'southward Bowdoin College explains that "a modern liberal arts education takes whatever y'all're passionate well-nigh — history, medicine, music, law, neuroscience, engineering, verse, teaching, biology — and helps you lot sympathize how it will bear upon the world effectually you lot."
Liberal arts colleges see college education as more than only chore training. Co-ordinate to Jonathan Veitch, president of Occidental College, "A liberal arts college takes seriously the notion that a job isn't a job, it'south a vocation, and then it improve bring pregnant to your life and help you retrieve through what that might look similar."
Should You Get a Liberal Arts Caste?
Whether a liberal arts degree is worth it to you depends on your interests, skills, and chosen career path. The following motivations tin can help you figure out whether you should consider pursuing a liberal arts caste.
A liberal arts education teaches you some of the most in-demand skills out there, including disquisitional thinking and creative problem-solving.
If you are passionate almost writing, public speaking, and/or helping people, a liberal arts degree may be an ideal selection for you.
Arguably 1 of the biggest benefits of a liberal arts degree is the power to employ the skills you lot gain from it to an array of industries and jobs. If you lot are unsure near what kind of job yous want, or are interested in multiple career paths, a liberal arts didactics can help you identify — and ultimately achieve — your goals.
Many liberal arts majors don't earn a huge income right off the bat, but that doesn't mean information technology's impossible to earn more later on. As long as you lot're willing to work difficult, you can brand your liberal arts caste worthwhile.
Additional Liberal Arts Resources
A comprehensive guide to choosing the best liberal arts degree and career for you.
Our 2020 list of the best liberal arts programs at U.S. colleges and universities.
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