What defines a liberal arts university?

Parents Forum
81

Well the entirety of if I attend college A vs B, I’ll get to here is speculative.

I would admit that a higher percentage of LAC grads head to grad school but there’s a bias for that up front. These kids are more likely to be thinking grad school in a liberal art from day one. And often have the financials to make that work from day one.

But for business, etc, their work experience will carry more weight than the rep of the college.

Schools will market what’s best for them. So if it’s 60% work and 37% go to grad school - they’ll claim 97% success. They’ll even name ‘some colleges’ our grads go to and name drop but leave off the ‘less impressive.’ So will the schools that place more in jobs and less in grad school.

Schools will make you believe that to get to Harvard, you need a school like theirs but it’s not entirely true. It’s instilling - FUD - fear, uncertainty and doubt - a classic tool of salespeople.

Fascinating chat - my main point is - them the entirety of the argument is subjective and based with perhaps, assumed arguments, that are, in reality not black and white.

82

What I’m hearing from you is that all of these ROI studies are skewed in one way or another.

83

Well if you look at US News, Colorado School of Mines is right there with Yale but it obviously is a different kind of school. If you look in Alabama, UAH is considered the school with the best ROI but it also has a biased enrollment toward certain majors.

Yes ROIs can be skewed because like other rankings, the inputs and weightings that are used are subjective. Yale is not putting out teachers en masse like maybe Middle Tennessee State is.

And everyone’s tuition contribution is different. One kid might pay full tuition. Another getting a free ride.

Back to what is an LAC or LAU as in the title of the chat - I’d simply contend they are whatever the school making the claim wants them to be. They get to decide. We don’t.

Thanks

84

Thanks for the summary, but you still didn’t answer any of my questions. You are no closer to explaining what the historical, “narrow” definition was, or why you insist that this undefined definition is now too narrow.

You’ve added that the still undefined “too narrow . . . historical” definitions exclude too many new fields; the only example you mentioned is mechanical engineering, but you also explain that you don’t want to expand the definition to “highly specialized and concentrated fields such sub-categories of engineering.” So then what is wrongfully being excluded?

And while you claim you “don’t discount the value of a ‘liberal arts; education,’” you won’t explain what you perceive that “value” to be.

Honestly. it seems you and others have some generalized grievance against the concept of a liberal arts education, but I have no idea what you or they even mean when you use the phrase. Would it be fair to say that you don’t either?

85

Maybe the key question is, why do schools wish to identify this way? The irony behind many of the swipes at liberal arts education is that almost every institution finds value in the liberal arts approach. That’s why even schools like MIT have GIR requirements. The dividing line is one of emphasis. If the school focuses on highly specialized and particularize skills, then there isn’t going to be much time left over to devote to a liberal arts approach. If a school focuses more broadly on developing critical thinking and communication skills that are applicable and transferable to a broad range of issues, then there won’t be time or resources for in-depth specialization.

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86

Not presuming to state a fact, just what I “sensed” in my circle: I wonder to what degree it’s “psychology”. There’ll be a good number of high school students with already very specific career visions, such as medicine, military, engineering, law, public safety,…

And then there’ll be an (equally?) large number of high school students who feel somewhat lost, and possibly even unsettled by the fact that among their peers, they haven’t been able to figure out their lives yet – at age 17.

Having a collective “respectable” term that embraces those students’ desire to, for now, “just go to college” so that the answer may eventually come to them, can be reassuring to a teen - and, as a target group, is one attractively large (enough) for colleges to want to “offer them a home.”

I think for many colleges it’s less idealistic/philosophic, than strategic. Which why this discussion is interesting, but probably moot.

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87

One way I look at how much a university focuses on its undergrads is to figure out the percentage of all students who are undergrads. .For instance, last time I checked, Prin/Dart/Corn/Brown were all more than 60% undergrad… Yale was around 40%… and Harvard is like 30% undergrad. Someone can check me on those, as they are estimates from a few years ago.

UChicago is actually only about 40% undergrad. Stanford is about 45% undergrad.

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88

I think it may be something more fundamental. Many schools (and prospective students) pay lip service to a “liberal arts” approach because they recognize that the liberal arts approach has educational value. That in turn drives the strategy.

As for the rest, I disagree that liberal arts is primarily a “respectable” catch-all for supposedly “lost” kids. Kids who haven’t chosen a particular career path at 16 or 17 are no less “lost” than those who are positive they have it all figured out.

Similarly, I don’t view liberal arts as a soft landing spot for those who couldn’t hack a real fields. I find this notion to be particularly insulting. (I realize you haven’t said this, but some on CC have.)

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89

Just wanted to say a quick thank you to the OP for posing the question that started this thread. It’s been interesting hearing everyone’s different points of view about it. And I do mean that in a very positive way. I didn’t know that it was a sort of controversial topic.

I have since learned that I really do not care very much about what the definition of a liberal arts institution is. If a college/university is the right fit for your kid and your finances and kid gets accepted there and kid can see him/herself/themselves happy there for about 4 years, then go for it. If the “liberal arts college or university” (WHATEVER your definition of ‘liberal arts’ is) is NOT the right fit for your kid & your family, then don’t send your kid there.

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90

The topic of engineering has been brought up a few times. Am going to ‘think out loud’ about that for a sec. So bear with me.

Ok, so what ABOUT engineering and liberal arts schools? Fine…what about it? If the criteria for a college/university that YOUR family is looking for is something like “must have an engineering degree,” then so be it. That criteria would, of course, eliminate a lot of liberal arts schools.

But so what?

IF the ‘must have’ is for ANY engineering degree, then yes, some liberal arts schools WILL have AN engineering degree. But is it the specific one that YOUR kid is looking for?

That’s a different question.

IF, in fact, your ACTUAL decision factor is “must have an ABET-certified undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering,” then yes…that will eliminate even more liberal arts schools from the list.

IF, however, your decision factors are something like this:

  • ABET-certified BS in mechanical engineering
  • ‘small-ish’ school overall (let’s say, for the sake of argument, total 6000 students or less in the entire institution)

…then that’s also more specific.

IF, however, an additional decision factor for you is “employed in an engineering job specific to my kid’s major within 6 months of graduation,” then that also might narrow your list.

There are LACs/universities which have “Engineering Physics” as a major. Or just a generic “Engineering” major. Or it might not be ABET-certified. OR if your kid is into computer science and wants to major in that, plenty of LACs/universities have computer science degrees, but some might be a BA instead of a BS. Or they won’t all be an ABET program. Or the department might be really small. Or it might be one of these dealios where the LAC/university says that they have a partnership agreement with Big U where you go to LAC/university for 3 yr and then 2 yr at Big U to finish out your computer science or engineering degree.

…thus, maybe your criteria/decision factors would ALSO include something like “take all of the classes for the BS at one school, don’t have to switch to another school part way through.” This, then, would eliminate many LAC/university options.

…which is why it all comes back to the specifics of what YOU are looking for.

91

Agreed, of course with everything.

Didn’t consider my high-stats kid “lost” either, nor was there anything “soft” at the Ivy’s SLAC where she “landed”.

I was trying to describe the anxiety and questioning of one’s self-worth that I sensed in that age group during Junior year. Being able to “root” themselves in a highly regarded community, as an alternative to those with “MD, Attorney, Architect, Lieutenant,…” ambitions, words known since Kindergarten, was reassuring – and probably something that colleges have realized to be a click-friendly search engine term.

I doubt in the first 10 years of school, any of them had aspired to become a “liberal arts graduate” some day :wink: . So figuring out that this “was a thing”, and that were was nothing wrong with them, was probably important to some and drove their college search.

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92

Why would this necessarily be true? Schools like MIT have extensive general education requirements while also offering majors with in-depth specialization.

Lack of resources for in-depth specialization is more likely due to having a department that is too small to offer more than the bare minimum upper level course work for the major. While this is more common at smaller schools, it is something that really needs to be looked at on a department-by-department basis.

93

“Soft landing spot” majors may vary from one college to another. They may or may not be liberal arts majors. At some colleges, a joke may be something like “What is an alternate name for engineering? Pre-business” meaning that business is the “soft landing spot” major there.

Of course, colleges with high minimum rigor in their general education requirements (e.g. Caltech, Harvey Mudd) would mitigate against “soft landing spots”.

94

Of course, someone wanting to study engineering at a small school may not be limited to LACs with engineering. There are small engineering-focused schools as well.

95

If you say so. I’m no expert on MIT requirements but my understanding is that they require an average of one humanities, arts, or social sciences class per semester (two of which can take care of the “communications” requirements.) If the bulk of the other classes are engineering, I am not sure I’d call that an “extensive” liberal arts education.

96

Approximately half of an MIT bachelor’s degree is in GIRs. All except the REST part is in some kind of liberal arts (HASS, math, or science). The HASS portion makes up about a quarter of an MIT bachelor’s degree, and must include a concentration that includes more advanced courses than introductory level.

What would you consider to be “extensive liberal arts education”?

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I don’t have a cutoff. Extensive was your word. At some schools, virtually all of the classes will be in “HASS, math, or science” or other GIR topics. That seems more extensive than half.

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Of course, that can go in either direction. At Wesleyan, the joke would go something like, “What’s the alternative to a career in Hollywood?” “Medicine.”

99

Misleading, and not a helpful way to think about life.

At what point? First job out of college? Ten years out? 20? 30? NOBODY can predict the future job market. The best preparation is a broad education and flexibility.

Besides, not everyone believes the goal is the highest possible salary. I’ve always believed that’s a terrible way to think about your life (high income = good outcome). My husband and I are both highly educated (me: double Ivy, masters; him: doctorate), work in professions we love, and are far from financially wealthy. But I’d say we have excellent outcomes. It would have been a terrible outcome had we chosen super-high-paying professions and were miserable.

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100

Perhaps high spending habits are driving the push for high income. It is common enough to see posts about not being able to save much for kids’ college by those with income that would not get college financial aid anywhere, indicating very high spending habits.

Perhaps many people would say that if your income is high enough that you are not poor, then additional income makes much less of a difference. But some people may have a definition of “poor” that requires a very high income to avoid being “poor”.