<p>Just wondering what are the major differences between LAC and major research universities aside from the size. From my understanding, LACs also offer BS degrees along with BA degrees so what makes the two different?</p>
<p>Liberal arts colleges focus primarily on undergraduate education (bachelor’s level). They usually don’t confer graduate degrees. </p>
<p>LACs only offer undergraduate degrees: BA/BS. The emphasis is entirely on teaching undergraduate students. </p>
<p>Universities also offer graduate degrees: MA/MD, PhD. While universities may have big name professors, some of the professors treat undergraduate teaching as an annoyance.</p>
<p>Here is a fairly comprehensive list of schools that are considered LACs:
<a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-liberal-arts-colleges”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-liberal-arts-colleges</a></p>
<p>@tk21769
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<p>A good list, except that I wouldn’t make a fetish out of the exact order of the rankings. About 7% of USNews’ system is based on spending per student which tracks pretty well with how the schools are sorted.</p>
<p>Yeah, I’ve seen that list before, some of those LACs e.g Wake Forest offer graduate degrees as well. Also, aren’t the Ivies considered Research Universities even though they are structured similarly to LACs?</p>
<p>@martin18
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<p>You’ve raised some valid points and where I have decided to come down on the issue is this: Most of the top LACs are basically smaller versions of the Ivy League, especially since all but a couple of Ivy League universities started out as liberal arts colleges themselves. (Yale College, Harvard College, King’s College, Dartmouth, The College of Rhode Island, etc.) They all teach the basics. Some of the Ivies have separate schools for business and engineering, but when people think of Columbia and Harvard, they’re basically thinking of the undergraduate arts and sciences division of each which awards the BA and in some cases the BS degree.</p>
<p>Also, it’s important to keep in mind that LACs typically have smaller student bodies with more individualized learning. While this isn’t true for all, most LACs are very small–the largest one I visited had 2,500 undergrads. As was previously mentioned, most LACs also don’t have graduate offerings, so research opportunities are available for undergrads. Students at LACs typically don’t have to declare a major until sophomore year, giving them time to explore various realms of study, etc. Hope this helps!! </p>
<p>@MonicaYoungLOL
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<p>And, just to make things even more confusing, one of the best known LACs in the country, Wesleyan, is about 2700 u/g; offers the Ph.D degree in math, biology, chemistry, physics, biophysics, astrophysics, molecular biology and biochem; runs a university press; and was given the name “university” at its inception when it had less than 50 students. 
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<p>If you like the idea of an LAC but also want a large campus size & more course offerings, consider the schools in the Claremont Consortium (Pomona, Pitzer, Claremont McKenna, Scripps, and Harvey Mudd). They are individual LACs, but they are part of one big campus space (sort of like lego blocks fit together). There are about 5,000 students across all the schools, and it is easy to cross register and take classes at the other colleges.</p>
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<p>Nor would I. In my opinion, the differences between LACs 10 or 20 positions apart tend to be less pronounced than the differences between research universities 10 or 20 positions apart in the US News rankings. #32 Kenyon or #41 Whitman, for example, give you pretty much the same kind of campus, the same kind of curriculum, the same small classes ,the same level of student-faculty interaction, nearly the same level of need-based aid, etc., as the T10 LACs. </p>
<p>Actually, Wake Forest University is not a LAC. </p>
<p>Most of the answers here are spot on; undergraduate teaching, usually offering only a bachelor’s degree, almost always fewer than 3,000 students.</p>
<p>By the way, do not pay much attention, if any, to whether the school’s title has the words “college” or “university” in it. Boston College is a research university, but Ohio Wesleyan University is a small LAC.</p>
<p>Also, US News lists all of the military academies under the LAC category, but this is questionable for a couple of reasons. First, you cannot earn a BA at any of them, only a BS. Second, they probably are not small enough because each has about 4500 cadets or midshipmen. On the other hand, emphasis is on undergraduate teaching. This simply shows how the definition of LAC is not as clear cut as we might want it to be.</p>
<p>Finally, most universities offer a BA degree in their College of Arts and Science. For this and other reasons, you can get a liberal arts degree from a research university. In other words, you do not need to attend a liberal arts college in order to get a liberal arts degree. Yet, to get a GOOD liberal arts degree you might want to put a priority on LAC’s.</p>
<p>:-" </p>
<p>Yes, Lawrence is a “university”, but if you have ever visited you would see it is clearly an LAC.</p>
<p>The biggest difference, IMO, is–do the profs get tenure and are rewarded mostly for the quality of their research, or for the quality of their teaching? At research universities (including all the Ivies, regardless of how they started out), research is definitely considered most important. Not so at the LACs. Obviously, that also means the top experts in any given field are almost certainly going to be at research universities.</p>
<p>There are big differences among the research universities, however. Princeton and Dartmouth are known to have alumni networks as strong as the top LACs, for instance. There are other Ivies where students & alums are not as tight.</p>
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<p>So what??? If that top expert is at the school but doesn’t deign to teach undergrads, how does that help you as an undergrad? And top experts are not necessarily top teachers. </p>
<p>When I was a grad student, having to teach undergrads was a necessary chore that paid the bills and permitted us to stay in school to pursue our personal first priority: our research.</p>
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<p>A good definition of “LAC” depends on a good definition of “liberal arts”. What is an “art”, and what does “liberal” mean, in this context? Why do we consider some disciplines (such as history, philosophy, and mathematics) “liberal arts”, but not others (such as engineering or architecture)?
<a href=“Liberal arts education - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education</a></p>
<p>At one time, all American colleges were small (by today’s standards). Most of today’s LACs are institutions that never evolved into universities (as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, Penn, Columbia, and Dartmouth did ). In theory, there doesn’t seem to be any good reason why a LAC could not have 10,000 students. In practice, the colleges we call LACs are all small. They did not add new buildings over time to accommodate graduate programs or Big Science research projects. Many of them are located in rural areas. That, and the fact that they never added pre-professional programs, meant there hasn’t been tremendous demand for them to grow far beyond their original campus footprints.</p>
<p>Other old colleges did grow … but in other respects, are they really very different from LACs? Is Yale College actually a LAC? Is Harvard College a LAC? In curriculum and even in scale, these colleges don’t seem very different from Williams College. We could say they are LACs that coincidentally happen to have graduate schools co-located on the same campuses. </p>
<p>However, there do seem to be differences in the institutional missions of these schools.<br>
It seems to me that the primary mission of Harvard faculty, including the Harvard College faculty, is to discover and disseminate knowledge. Government, business, industry, and academia itself are at least as important “customers” of that activity as individual college students are. It seems to me that the primary mission of the Williams College faculty is to cultivate “thought leaders”. The individual student is the primary customer; any benefits to government, business, industry, and academia are secondary effects. Class sizes, instructional methods, and allocation of faculty time are all a little different at LACs v. research universities. I think these differences reflect different institutional mission priorities, not just practical differences of scale. However, there is a lot of overlap and blurring of lines. Most of these schools are flexible enough that an individual teacher or student at either kind of school can color outside those lines.</p>