A case has been made at Princeton, by Brian Kernigan, that exposure to computer science should be a part of a liberal arts curriculum available to all the students. Not just as a tool.
This is the course he teaches
https://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall21/cos109/
I don’t know that “most” would say this. Are there any top liberal arts colleges that don’t offer any computer science?
Depends on what counts as a “computer science” course. SUNY Geneseo may count, but there are some computer science theory and machine learning courses in its math department.
The OP basically answered her own question:
We’ve been agreeing or disagreeing with her ever since.
It depends what you mean by “historically.” Most LACs have had CS majors for decades, often starting the major at a similar time period to small, private non-LAC colleges. I doubt that any would suggest that a college that offers a CS major cannot be a LAC, in the way that the original poster suggested a college that offers a pre-professional major like health sciences cannot be a LAC. Various 3rd party sources such as Wikipedia also include CS as part of liberal arts, as quoted below this post.
However, CS is not a classic liberal arts field, as taught by ancient Greeks thousands of years ago. In that sense, CS isn’t historically included as liberal arts. A large portion of the general population also consider CS a more of vocationally focused field than a liberal arts field, with good reason. CS could be taught with a vocational focus or a liberal arts focus, and many colleges/professors do the former in a portion of classes.
Personally I think the definitions are largely arbitrary. CS can be a useful field both for expanding general knowledge and understanding, and it can also be a useful field in learning job-specific skills. I also think the label “LAC” does not have a formal definition like LAC = Carnegie Classification of Baccalaureate Colleges: Arts & Sciences Focus, or LACs cannot have major x. Instead it refers to a general type of college with some similar, shared traits. Colleges with all of these shared traits clearly fit in the grouping. Colleges with only a portion can vary depending on the person assigning labels. The specific labels are not important. What is more important is whether the college has the traits that you value.
The modern use of the term liberal arts consists of four areas: the natural sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. Academic areas that are associated with the term liberal arts include:
- Life sciences (biology, ecology, neuroscience)
- Physical science (physics, astronomy, chemistry, physical geography)
- Logic, mathematics, statistics, computer science
- Philosophy
- History
- Social science (anthropology, economics, human geography, linguistics, political science, jurisprudence, psychology, and sociology)
- Creative arts (fine arts, music, performing arts, literature)
Whether most, many, or some would agree that CS is (or isn’t) part of “liberal arts”, there’s clearly no consensus. CS isn’t traditionally a part of “liberal arts” because it didn’t exist historically when the term “liberal arts” was coined. CS has elements of a basic science and elements related to the applications of computing devices. Even colleges aren’t sure in which department their CS programs should be housed. The CS major originated from their math department at some colleges and from their engineering department at others. If CS should be part of “liberal arts” as some argued, how is that determined? By the LACs, because they’ve included it in their programs? Isn’t that a circular definition?
Seems like you are bending over backwards to try to create issues where none exist. Why, I wonder?
That’s the entirety of the thread …. Because ultimately the topic is different for all.
I think the emphasis of looking at majors offered is the wrong way to look at it. To me the definition of “liberal arts college” is to distinguish schools who see their mission as teaching subjects for the purpose of imparting knowledge and encouraging thought and exploration of those subjects for themselves vs technical preparation for a specific career or vocation, with the underlying assumption that a knowledge based education better prepares their students for any career on a long term basis. Specialized skills are left for professional or graduate schools or on the job training. What students do with these degrees, including pursuing jobs is not relevant, ie just because Econ majors at Williams choose IB or consulting careers does not detract from Williams being a LAC.
No issue? Is the confusion over liberal arts not an issue? You seems to think that if a major (e.g. CS) is offered by LACs, then it must be part of liberal arts. Swarthmore offers engineering as a major, CMC offers economics-accounting as a major, etc. Are they liberal arts then?
My son started college with almost 40% of his fellow undergraduates at the University of Richmond, a liberal arts college. However, Richmond is a University, not a college, and five times the number of students study a non-liberal art major than any of the liberal arts majors offered.
In reality, you can get a Liberal Arts education in almost every University. So, for example, you can go to MIT and major in physics and take a history minor. At Cal-Tech, you can major in Biology and take an English minor.
IMO a broad-based study of Liberal Arts as part of an undergraduate college curriculum is of great value. I have a friend who is a Radiologist, and he uses the phrase “becoming an educated person.” It’s great that most schools require the diverse gen ed or core requirements. However, I know many kids AP out of these requirements and try to find programs that have less of these so they can jump right into their major. I believe these students are doing themselves a disservice and, in the long run, would be better off if they had a broad liberal arts foundation.
Both have lots of core or general education requirements in what are traditionally liberal arts areas. Also, a student can major in history or English / literature at these schools.
But also, students often look for the easiest and lowest work general education courses, such as “physics for poets” type courses.
At least it gives them some extra exposure to poetry and physics. Some of these courses are more interesting and sometimes more challenging than the kids think, as I remember my son complaining that his 4.0 got ruined by a B plus in his Intro to Dance elective.
Exactly. Both not only have highly prescribed core requirements in math and sciences (all of which are in traditional liberal arts), but also extensive (though less prescribed) requirements in humanities and social sciences (all of which are also in traditional liberal arts). That’s why I personally find the use of the term “liberal arts” to delineate certain colleges artificial and unnecessary. It’s really about breadth vs depth and their respective requirements by a college and/or a major.
Your efforts to sow confusion are not an issue to me.
The liberal arts can be studied at virtually any college or university, since most every college offers a plethora of majors and courses in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Math/Science.
What makes liberal arts colleges different than universities academically is the relative lack of pre-professional majors. There are exceptions, but at most LACs you aren’t going to see pre-pro options like Journalism, Engineering, or Business.
So it isn’t that you can’t get a liberal arts education at a university – you clearly can, and with typical distribution requirements, most every student does receive a broad lib-arts education; it’s that you can’t get (with some noted exceptions) a pre-professional education at a LAC. That is the real nuts-and-bolts academic distinction, to me.
If you’re so clear and certain, perhaps you can start by telling us what criteria you would use to define and delineate liberal arts generally?
However, they sometimes blur the line by offering more pre-professional courses under their liberal arts departments (e.g. finance and managerial economics courses in the economics department) and advertising their 3+2 engineering programs.
Sure, there may be pre-professional courses available under the lib-arts major – but not an entire major dedicated solely to that specialty.