<p>I've heard this term used over and over, and have tried to find a definition, but have yet to find out the truth: what exactly does LAC stand for, and what is it? (or what Are they?)</p>
<p>Thanks in advance, and I apologize for my lack of knowledge:)</p>
<p>Liberal Arts College:: a broad approach to education, covering disciplines other than say engineering, math, chemistry, psychology......not preprofessional training. Many times you hear Liberal Arts described as "well rounded" education. These schools are usually smaller than a large research university. </p>
<p>Swarthmore
Williams
these are just two examples of names you might look up. Many, many LACs exist and I encourage you too look into some.</p>
<p>Hazmat described what a liberal arts education is. However, many sizes and types of schools teach a liberal arts curriculum, including many top universities.</p>
<p>Liberal Arts College, in popular usage, refers to a small undergrad college that does not have the graduate and professional schools of a university. A university, to use Harvard as an example, consists of a college for undergrads (called Harvard College), plus graduate, medical, law, business, education, and public health schools that are, for all intents and purposes, separate subsidiaries of the corporation that have nothing to do with teaching undergrad students (except that grad students moonlight as TAs to help teach undergrads because they are cheap labor -- the professor gives a lecture once a week to a couple hundred students and then the TAs lead discussion sections).</p>
<p>A liberal arts college is a school that just has the 4-year undergraduate school with no graduate schools or graduate students (or in some cases, perhaps a very small grad school in a particular field). Liberal arts colleges tend to be small -- always under 3000 students, usually under 2000, compared to the 4000-30,000 undergrads at a typical university.</p>
<p>The tradeoff is that a small liberal arts college cannot offer the breadth of course options and activities of a university with far more students. However, it can offer 100% focus on undergrad education and teaching, a personalized style of education with very small class sizes, and a very cohesive community.</p>
<p>For the most part, the top LACs and the top universities teach the same stuff (for most students). They just do it in different ways. Each has its own pluses and minuses. The choice really depends on the individual student. I can argue it either way.</p>
<p>Wit all this focus on undergrads, do professors at liberal arts colleges publish research on their fields?</p>
<p>Sure. There is still pressure to publish. For example, my D's poli sci professor at an LAC just published a new book that has won several awards.</p>
<p>The big difference is that professors at LACs are not under as much pressure to generate revenues. At many top universities, the revenues from research grants exceed the revenues from tuition, room, and board. Professors are expected to generate those revenues. Also, you don't have professors who are hired exclusively for research, teaching at most a token class here or there.</p>
<p>The other difference is that research and published articles generated at an LAC typically involve undergrad participation, rather than grad students.</p>
<p>Having said that, there are advantages to the scale of research at universities. Most of that doesn't have much impact on undergrads, but there are levels of research that are not feasible at small colleges. So, again the trade-off is the scale at universities versus smaller, low budget research endeavors that involve undergrads in one-on-one mentoring relationships with the professors.</p>