Can UChicago be considered a Liberal Arts College?

Parents Forum
41

I think we can safely define a LAC as any institution that has:

  • minimum 1 undergraduate student,
  • minimum 1 course that has “literature” in the title,
  • minimum 1 graduate, whose first job is not in engineering or finance,
  • a URL on their public facing web site to a page that contains the words “liberal” and “arts” in direct proximity of another.

The challenge is to define what is not.

1 Like
42

So you are now saying that “most if not all” Universities have LACs as part of overall system. Thus we can call them LACs.

So…

Every school in the country is a LAC. That helps a lot! Agree close the thread!

2 Likes
43

I think the surest to keep the thread open is to ask for it to be closed in every post.

44

I think you should read the last 15 posts. Like a liberal arts education, it’s helpful to go beyond the labels and think about how it evolved, the differences between various colleges, and a more nuanced point of view on this topic. Personally I found it refreshing and educational to hear some of the dialog and history by various posters.

But if you want the twitter version of it, yes, every University house some sort of Liberal Arts College, so technically the answer is yes to the question of “Can UChicago be considered a Liberal Arts College?” This does not mean it’s the same as the Swarthmore or Amherst.

45

I can go ahead and close this. Btw, UChicago will shed light on why they consider their school a LAC tomorrow during the live event.

46

Why do you think I don’t know how our education system evolved? Why do you think I didn’t read the entire thread? For the purposes of 99.9% of people on CC LAC has a specific meaning. If you want to change the definition of what an LAC is so you are right…go for it.

47

@DeadHeadDad, it is not about me being right. I just thought people on this thread would be interested in hearing directly from the source.