What is a Liberal Arts College?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Pretty Self-Explanitory question.</p>

<p>I go to a competitive public school in San Jose, California where it seems as though everyone is in an extremely stressful race to get into the UC system, and those who usually don't go to state or community colleges and then transfer.</p>

<p>But just out of the blue my school guidance counselor told me to at least consider looking at Liberal Arts colleges.</p>

<p>I haven't heard much about liberal arts colleges other than that supposedly, "They're good" but could someone please tell me why?</p>

<p>Why are they so relatively unknown if they are so good? What are some good choices of liberal arts colleges to apply/look at? What exactly is liberal arts anyways? Are there certain pros/cons to liberal arts colleges that public, private or community colleges don't have?</p>

<p>And just what the heck is liberal arts anyways? I'm also a little undecided about my choice of major at the moment and what I want to do, would a liberal arts college be good to consider? Does being a liberal arts college mean it's better or worse in one specific area or another?</p>

<p>If anyone can answer anything related to these questions, then please let me know. Thanks in advance :)</p>

2

<p>long explanation made short…
the difference between a big box store and a small family run store. universities and liberal arts college they both get you where need to go. one is more caring and close knit and cares more about you as an undergrad. that sums it up!</p>

3

<p>Oh, so is there anything that the colleges are particularly good at? Just when I think liberal arts, I assume things like social sciences, humanities and, well, arts. I could be wrong though, as again, I’m just trying to get information.</p>

<p>Also, I’ve done a little research on my own and found that despite the fact that LAC’s are given very generous academic ratings and are at times, very selective with admissions, you rarely see them on “Best Colleges” lists. Why is that? Are they just lesser known?</p>

4

<p>Some lists only list national universities</p>

<p>In fact I believe the top school for undergrad STEM is Harvey Mudd</p>

5

<p>What a LAC has:</p>

<p>(1) Small size </p>

<p>Most LACs range in size from a few hundred to 3000 students. Public LACs are often larger than private ones, but they almost never exceed 5000 students. Although universities can also be very small (Caltech and Brandeis), they tend to be a bit bigger.</p>

<p>(2) Broad offerings in the liberal arts </p>

<p>The liberal arts consist of the humanities (English, philosophy, classics, religion, art history), social sciences (economics, history, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, psychology, political science), sciences (biology, geology, chemistry, physics, computer science), math (math, statistics), and the arts (theatre, dance, visual arts, music). </p>

<p>What a LAC typically does not have:</p>

<p>(1) Graduate degrees </p>

<p>A few LACs grant PhDs (Wesleyan and Bryn Mawr), some have law schools (Washington & Lee and Lewis & Clark), and some have other graduate schools like education (Willamette). In general, however, most LACs grant only BA/BS degrees. This is contrast to universities, which also house graduate schools of medicine, law, dentistry, business, divinity, etc. </p>

<p>(2) Pre-professional programs </p>

<p>Some LACs have majors in business (Skidmore), engineering (Bucknell), communications (Susquehanna), nursing (Hiram), etc. In general, however, most LACs focus entirely on the liberal arts. </p>

<p>(3) More focus on the liberal arts than a college of arts & sciences at a university </p>

<p>While a university often offers pre-professional programs like nursing and engineering, it also has a college of arts & sciences that has the exact same array of programs as a LAC. In fact, most rare departments are found at universities (e.g. Inner Asian studies, Near Eastern studies, Celtic studies, etc.). </p>

<p>(4) More flexibility or requirements than a university </p>

<p>There are LACs and universities with core curriculums (Columbia and St. John’s), LACs and universities with distribution requirements (Penn and Bowdoin), and LACs and universities with no requirements (Brown and Amherst). Differences in curriculum have nothing to do with the type of college.</p>

<p>

[ul][<em>]They generally lack well-known sports teams.
[</em>]They’re usually small and don’t have a lot of alumni.
[li]They’re not research powerhouses and are thus seldom in the news.[/ul]</p>[/li]
<p>

Almost all of the top liberal arts colleges are good at pretty much everything they offer. Once you get a good bit further down in quality and selectivity, things aren’t quite so even. You may have a college excelling in a particular area - such as marine biology for Eckerd or archaeology for Lycoming - but be a lot weaker in other fields. The same holds true for universities, of course.</p>

6

<p>“Liberal arts college” is somewhat of a misnomer – although many of them focus on liberal arts (humanities, social studies, science), some do offer more obviously pre-professional majors like engineering, visual and performing arts, and music. Many have particular strengths and weaknesses in terms of academics.</p>

<p>The main intended characteristic of a liberal arts college is a focus on undergraduate education at all levels. Versus a big university, the main advantage is smaller faculty led classes with greater individual attention, particularly at the lower division level. However, upper division courses may have fewer offerings or less frequent offering, and graduate courses that advanced undergraduates at research universities sometimes take are minimal or nonexistent.</p>

<p>Liberal arts colleges are generally small (under 3,000 students). “Fit” (both academic and social) is often a bigger factor in selecting a small school, since a student who does not fit in to the academic and social environment may find the small size to be limiting. Bigger schools tend to be a more acceptable fit for more students, but can have the “lost in the crowd” feeling that some do not like and thus may not be a great fit.</p>

<p>Many of the best known liberal arts colleges are private and expensive at list price (with various degrees of generosity in financial aid); there are some public liberal arts colleges, some of which are less expensive at list price even for out of state students (see [COPLAC</a> | Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges](<a href=“http://www.coplac.org/students/admissions.php]COPLAC”>http://www.coplac.org/students/admissions.php) ).</p>

7

<p>There wasn’t always the sharp distinction between LACs and research universities that we see today, and that’s because until the Civil War most of the eastern seaboard universities (Harvard, Yale, Princeton) were not much more than liberal arts colleges themselves; Dartmouth still considers itself a liberal arts college even though it has a small medical school and business school. Really, until the 1950s and the expansion of Big Science, the biggest delineator was whether a school or group of schools could field the requisite number of players to compete with each other athletically. That’s how the Ivy League was born; but as late as the 1960s Dartmouth still played Wesleyan, Williams, Amherst and Bowdoin in certain sports, including basketball and, I believe, Colgate still plays Cornell in football.</p>

8

<p>Dartmouth plays Holy Cross, Butler, and Sacred Heart this year in football, in addition to the other Ivy League schools:
[Football</a> - Schedule/Results - DartmouthSports.com—Official Web Site of Dartmouth Varsity Athletics](<a href=“Football - Dartmouth College Athletics”>Football - Dartmouth College Athletics)</p>

9

<p>“Liberal Arts” traditionally refers to the “arts” associated with being a free human being.
This contrasts with the “arts” associated with being a blacksmith, a mechanic, or a farmer.
The concept assumes the existence of a class of people who have the wealth and leisure to cultivate the kind of knowledge most worth having to someone who wants to live a good, civilized life.</p>

<p>So, to the extent a liberal arts college adheres to these rather old-fashioned ideas, it does not exist for career training. Nor does it exist especially to cultivate cutting-edge knowledge in highly specialized academic areas. Its mission is more focused on turning out well-educated citizens prepared to make disciplined use of leisure, as well as to be “thought leaders” in many fields of work.</p>

10

<p>^^This why so many ancient universities were basically places to study sacred texts and to turn out priests. In Europe, they played a crucial role in perpetuating the study of Latin and Greek throughout the Dark Ages (you see vestiges of that even today when fraternities and sororities refer to themselves as “Greek societies”.) Later, it became widely accepted for members of the ruling classes to send at least one child, usually the more intellectually curious one, to a university. The earliest American colleges thought they were establishing little Oxfords and Cambridges on the British model, and with the exception of Penn, almost all of them had religious affiliations.</p>

11

<p>There are parts of the country and circles everywhere where Williams, Amherst, Wellesley, Smith, Barnard, Swarthmore, Bowdoin, and other top LACs are well known and the only California public schools anyone has heard of are Berkeley and UCLA.</p>

12

<p>And graduate schools are very familiar with the reputable LACs, even if the average ‘person in the street’ doesn’t recognize a name. </p>

<p>LACs have other benefits that haven’t been mentioned: Generally very small class sizes - no huge lectures, no TAs teaching sections, an emphasis on writing and speaking persuasively. For research, which may not be cutting edge but is still taking place, you work with and for the prof, not a grad student, so you aren’t bottle washing and doing other low level work in your first year or so for someone whose primary concern isn’t your development. Lastly, LACs tend to foster a cooperative, non-competitive culture which many students find more welcoming than at universities. If you do a search here on cc on LACs vs. universities, you’ll get dozens of threads with more detailed comparisons.</p>

<p>My suggestion - visit a LAC and see what you think. Pomona is highly regarded in SoCal. Reed has a good reputation in Oregon. There aren’t any highly regarded LACs in the Bay Area that I know of unfortunately.</p>

13

<p>In general, there aren’t many top LACs in the West, at least compared with the North East. There are still quite a few pretty decent ones, such as the Claremont colleges (Pomona, Claremont McKenna and such), but these are not in the same league with Williams, Wesleyan and the others.This is understandable if you take into consideration that LACs tend to be private institutions (not all, of course), and the West have only but a handful elite private research universities (Stanford, CalTech, and while USC is very good, it’s far from being an elite institution) . Of course, while public universities of the West, most notably the UC system and UW-Seattle are superb, the same can’t be said about public universities of the North East.</p>

14

<p>“Consolation:
There are parts of the country and circles everywhere where Williams, Amherst, Wellesley, Smith, Barnard, Swarthmore, Bowdoin, and other top LACs are well known and the only California public schools anyone has heard of are Berkeley and UCLA.”</p>

<p>^THIS</p>

15

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<p>Exactly. What one “knows” / recognizes about colleges is driven SO much by a) region and b) socioeconomic circles / classes. Which is why caring about what the man on the street thinks is pointless.</p>

16

<p>LAC is where you are taught to read, write and think. You can take these skills anywhere to do anything (Steve Jobs -Reed College).</p>

17

<p>You are supposed to improve your reading, writing, and thinking skills in any college; this is not unique to LACs.</p>

18

<p>A liberal arts education gives you a more well-rounded education which often includes a core curriculum on the main foundations of knowledge.</p>

19

<p>Steve Jobs was a drop out.</p>

20

<p>

</p>

<p>However, a liberal arts education can be gotten at many schools, not just liberal arts colleges. Liberal arts colleges, just like other schools, vary in the extent of their breadth or core requirements. They can range from extensive (Harvey Mudd) to none (Amherst, Evergreen State). In the latter case, a student need not get a well-rounded education to graduate.</p>