Yes. Colleges can define for themselves how the present themselves, and the fact that so many try to align with the Liberal Arts concept in one way or another in testament to the importance and influence of the approach in our undergraduate system.
Of course. Widespread adoption and veneration doesn’t nullify the concept in the least. It reinforces its importance.
If anything, I wish the liberal arts influence was even more prevalent among undergraduate programs of all varieties. We are in desperate need of more people who can approach a wide range of issues flexibly, and who possess breadth and of knowledge beyond their area of expertise.
Not to me. Different schools set their own agendas. Choose accordingly.
I actually didn’t have Kenyon in mind, but I did mention Amherst in this context a few times upthread. You didn’t make the connection?
On the other hand, you’re right that MIT is an example of the latter. It’s among my favorite schools (plural). Does it matter? In any event, I’m not in the habit of needlessly praising one particular school.
With regard to “necessary breadth”, I said before that it’s a tradeoff a college has to make. It probably makes that choice based on the types of students it has. But there should be some baseline requirements in the fundamentals, if it claims to offer a “liberal arts” education , don’t you think?
But both tell us something about what is valued. What you call substance tells us what the college values in terms of its educational approach. What you call marketing tells us what college thinks the desirable prospective applicants value.
Ideally there will be quite a lot of overlap between these two, and I think at many institutions that’s the case. It makes sense from a marketing and mission perspective to align these two (and other) motivations. Where there isn’t alignment, schools may struggle over time with either or both.
Let’s not forget that one of the most remarkable marketing/branding success stories of the 20th century is the idea of an Ivy League. Did it not capture something that was substantive?
…which is another way of saying, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Similarly, smart, book-ish, young adults with a yen for learning who believe there is something like “a liberal arts university” that caters to their needs find themselves drawn to colleges as well as universities that fit those needs. Pretty soon the colleges are turning away qualified students by the bucketful because they don’t have room for all the applicants. Why argue with success?
So let me attempt to parse this. You are saying that M.I.T. and schools like it, which don’t claim to be liberal arts schools, actually are that, whereas schools that call themelves by that name, whether Amherst or Kenyon, actually aren’t. You think the descriptor “liberal arts college” is being used deceptively to compensate for the failure of these colleges to be as good as your exemplary schools - to have “necessary breadth” and satisfy “baseline requirements.”
That’s quite the pile-up of abstractions. I doubt it’s only me that can’t make much of this beyond that you don’t like liberal arts colleges. Fair enough.
Where did you get the idea that I don’t like liberal arts colleges? Is it the result of your parsing or imagining? You need to read the posts more carefully before parsing them.
It’s hard to have a focussed discussion with an interlocutor who won’t accept the implications of his prior statements. You say that the term “liberal arts college” is just marketing without substance. Am I to take from this assertion that you actually love these substanceless schools? Okay.
Well, @1NJParent , you made the distinction between marketing and substance a few posts back, and you have also said that “liberal arts colleges” don’t really deserve to be called as such because your preferred schools actually do a better job of teaching the liberal arts. If you now want to say that liberal arts colleges deserve the name and that substance trumps marketing in their appeal to the public, that’s fine with me. Are you wiling to say as much?
Well, if I’ve got you wrong, it must be that you accept that “liberal arts colleges” deserve the name and that substance trumps marketing in their presentation to the public. I will leave it to your other readers to judge whether your previous comments could be so construed.
I’ve said many times that the term “liberal arts” bothers me, not with respect to “liberal arts colleges”, but more generally. What and how a college (LAC or non-LAC) markets itself or calls itself may not match the substance.