It’s my understanding that a UCLA student in the school of Letters and Science would encounter situations — like huge class sizes with smaller sections taught by TAs — that many would define as being uncharacteristic of a liberal arts college. That’s is different from the fact that at University of Chicago, a student can get what some consider a traditional liberal arts education.
My 2 cents: No - U Chicago isn’t a “LAC” and yes, for this reason, I thought the thread title that was pinned to the top of the “Latest” feed sounded kind of weird.
This is directly from the University of Minesota’s description of The College of Liberal Arts:
“We’re a liberal arts college in a top-ranked research university, located in the heart of the Twin Cities business and non-profit communities, driven by a purpose to do the most good we can for others.”
O. M. G. !!!
Rather than starting this same thread all over, why can’t CC just link to the previous circular debate on that matter instead?
It had uncovered ad nauseum that no one could come to agreement what precisely delineates an LAC, or what contemporary subjects should be counted as liberal arts, what the tolerable “cut-off” percentage is for the share of subjects, or degree levels, or professional studies,… to still “qualify” as LAC. Or whether any “U” can technically be a liberal arts “C” in the first place?
@CC_Sorin: I hope some benevolent Moderator will find the “Close Thread” button on their toolbar rather soon - else just reopen the thread they just closed.
Yes. I work at the University of Virginia. We have the College of Arts and Sciences. In my 22 years here I have never heard anyone call UVA a Liberal Arts College.
We may not be able to define precisely what an LAC is, but all of us, except for a few folks from UChicago, know what it is NOT, and UChicago isn’t an LAC.
I agree. There isn’t a clear defined way for what a LAC, but many are arguing that UChicago is not, when the administration of UChicago says it is. Who are we to disagree, if they want to be called that?
It’s like saying to someone, you are a conservative, and the person replies, no I am a liberal. It’s unnecessary spinning without real purpose.
The College at the University of Chicago is a liberal arts college. A university is a collection of colleges, schools, institutes, etc. The College just isn’t the only thing at UChicago. If you take the strict approach that to be a LAC, you can’t have anything else related to the LAC, then Oberlin isn’t a LAC because it is Oberlin College and Conservatory.
To put a finer point on this, I think there are such things as “the” liberal art colleges, where they have specifically positioned themselves as being focused on undergraduates, primarily teaching them with low class sizes, primary subjects, and smaller campuses. For many students, this is a perfect environment for many to learn.
This does not mean that traditional national universities cannot contain “a” liberal art college that teaches a liberal arts curriculum. I think most, if not most have this. Of course, they are very different than the ones described above.
My understanding is that the original term University was only meant for graduate level schools, but since then, Universities have come to mean a place where collective colleges, including pre-professional ones, have come together.
I can’t think of any of “the” Liberal Arts Colleges outside the U. I think it’s a construct of the US, which fits perfectly with those who want to go to such environments and why US’s diverse educational system is so popular.
To put an even finer point on it, as a graduate of one of the traditional LACs I can tell you that from their POV, they didn’t position themselves to be anything other than what they’ve always been: institutions of higher learning. In a country far, far away and long, long ago, virtually every American college resembled a LAC; they taught wealthy kids a little bit of classical Greek and Latin, Algebra, maybe something a little bit “up-to-date”, like “Political Economy” and Yale had a separate undergraduate school for science up until the mid-20th century. As far as the “little ivies” are concerned, it was the rest of the world that positioned itself, not them:
I could definitely see this. Most Universities, including Chicago, Harvard, Columbia, Dartmouth, Princeton, etc. likely all started as “colleges”, and they expanded into other fields, and developed into National Universities. Some decided not to. I still believe the core of most universities is a liberal arts college, imho. They are usually the largest of the colleges inside universities.
Now the labeling of “LAC” is interesting. If you look at some of these charters, they don’t explicitly call themselves “Liberal Arts College.” For example, Amherst’s charter has “said College, in such manner as shall most effectually promote virtue and piety, and the knowledge of such of the Languages and of the liberal and useful Arts and Sciences” and Dartmouth isn’t too different, “a college erected in our said province of New Hampshire by the name of Dartmouth College, for the education and instruction of youth of the Indian tribes in this land in reading, writing, and all parts of learning which shall appear necessary and expedient for civilizing and christianizing children of pagans, as well as in all liberal arts and sciences, and also of English youth and any others.”
As National Universities began to form, these colleges that did not choose that path decided to focus on (traditional) Liberal Arts and Sciences (only), and perhaps for the sake of brevity (and I’d argue positioning), called themselves, Liberal Arts Colleges. Sounds much better than traditional liberal arts and sciences only colleges.
Now, can UChicago be considered a Liberal Arts College? From my point of view as a UChicago grad and a soon to be parent of a Uchicago student, I’d call UChicago a national university that has a liberal arts college. The core curriculum is liberal arts. And I personally don’t mind the original topic post of the AMA – especially if it was done in a thought provoking way --, but I can understand how this can confuse people.
When Melville said that “a whale ship was my Yale College,” he wasn’t alluding to an institution that was anything like a modern university but rather what we would call unambiguously a liberal arts college. When in late 19th century new universities on the model of the great German research universities came into being (Johns Hopkins, Chicago, Stanford) those institutions had within them undergraduate “colleges” of the traditional sort, but they had another mission as well and other dimensions - graduate research in production of new knowledge. And, of course, older institutions like Harvard and Yale also became reoriented as research universities while retaining their traditional liberal arts colleges nestled within them.
There are, however, a few distinctive features in the case of Chicago. I draw my information from William H. McNeill’s memoir, “Hutchins’ University.”
In 1930 on the arrival of boy wonder Robert Maynard Hutchins as President of the University there began an intense period of remodeling and experimentation with undergraduate education, some of the effects of which have persisted to the present day (and were certainly still in evidence in my time in the sixties). Administratively the University was divided into four Graduate Divisions plus the College. Faculty that taught in the College held separate appointments in one of those Divisions as well as the College. That arrangement exists to the present day, and it has always been the case that eminent professors in each of these Divisions also held appointments and taught courses in the College - that is, if they had the right stuff as teachers. In my day in the sixties most of my profs in the College were senior or tenure-track faculty. But there were exceptions, adjuncts or junior faculty specially chosen for their teaching ability. As McNeill puts it, describing the College of the Hutchins era: “A related feature of the College was its public commitment to teaching. Recruits to the staff were promised that that their careers at the University of Chicago would not depend on research and publication in the way that was expected of graduate faculty.” Even some esteemed graduate faculty came to devote more of their energy to teaching in the College than to research and publication. One of the most revered of these was Norman Maclean, who I saw as the model of a certain kind of sensitive intellectualism; he had hardly written a thing for the past thirty years. (After his retirement he did, however, produce those two exquisite prose gems, “A River Runs Through It,” and “Young Men and Fire.”)
I believe something of this devotion to undergraduate teaching continues to the present day at Chicago and is part of its ethos. That’s what is being referred to in the heading of the Q & A thread. The potential applicants who will be reading that thread are not coming to Chicago to do research but to receive the Chicago brand of liberal education. I expect the officer will make that clear in answering whatever questions are posed to him.
And, as usual, @marlowe1 infuses the conversation with a distinctively scholarly and - dare I say it - liberal arts -approach to language and rhetorical flourish. It begs the question, however, as to how many other research universities with similarly situated points on their administrative flow charts, celebrate them in the same way Chicago does?
