A liberal arts college is one with a primary emphasis on undergraduate study in the liberal arts and sciences.
Students in the liberal arts generally major in a particular discipline while receiving exposure to a wide range of academic subjects, including sciences as well as the traditional humanities subjects taught as liberal arts.
A "liberal arts" institution can be defined as a "college or university curriculum aimed at imparting broad general knowledge and developing general intellectual capacities, in contrast to a professional, vocational, or technical curriculum." Although what is known today as the liberal arts college began in Europe, the term is commonly associated with the United States. Prominent examples in the US include the so-called Little Three, Colby-Bates-Bowdoin, and Little Ivy colleges in New England, the surviving, predominantly female Seven Sisters colleges along the northeastern seaboard, and the Claremont Colleges in Southern California, but similar institutions are found all over the country.
Liberal arts colleges are found in all parts of the world. Examples of such colleges are Bishop's University in Canada, St. Thomas University in Fredericton, Canada, John Cabot University in Rome, Italy, European College of Liberal Arts in Germany, University College Utrecht in the Netherlands, Foundation for Liberal and Management Education in Pune, India, Campion College in Sydney, Australia and Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco. However, especially in Europe, many topics covered in the general education conveyed at American liberal arts colleges are also addressed in specialized secondary schools.
The “liberal arts college experience” in the US is characterized by three main aspects that demarcate it from undergraduate experiences in other countries:
- smaller size than universities, which usually means more individual attention is given to each student;
- residential, which means students live and learn away from home, often for the first time, and learn to live well with others. Additionally, the residential experience of living on campus brings a wide variety of cultural, political, and intellectual events to students who might not otherwise seek them out in a non-residential setting (though not every college has such strict residency requirements); and
- a typically two-year exploration of the liberal arts or general knowledge before declaring a major.
Famous quotes containing the words liberal, arts and/or college:
“The liberal wing of the feminist movement may have improved the lives of its middle- and upper-class constituency—indeed, 1992 was the Year of the White Middle Class Woman—but since the leadership of this faction of the feminist movement has singled out black men as the meta-enemy of women, these women represent one of the most serious threats to black male well-being since the Klan.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“... the creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“It is true enough, Cambridge college is really beginning to wake up and redeem its character and overtake the age.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)