<p>And what's a liberal arts college? What's the difference between a university? Does it matter?</p>
<p>Liberal arts majors are basically majors that have no association to the hard sciences, like mathematics or physics. A good example of a non-liberal arts major would be somebody clamoring to become an Engineer. While an example of a liberal arts major would be somebody who decides to major in English or Anthropology or the political sciences.</p>
<p>People who major in the liberal arts don’t have a definite career path: For example, somebody who majored in English may decide to teach in a high school or become an editor of some sort. A career-oriented college graduate would have a much more defined path if he or she decided to major in Engineering. In other words, career-oriented majors are VERY specific with their later occupations while liberal arts majors are somewhat lax.</p>
<p>And LACs are colleges that have undergraduate courses that pertain specifically to the study in the liberal arts. And I believe the term university and college are interchangeable, but don’t quote me on that.</p>
<p>^yeah…no</p>
<p>liberal arts colleges emphasise a broader base of wisdom in the humanities, sciences, and other fields. students more commonly go with humanities majors, but there’s a reason liberal arts colleges have majors in the hard sciences. </p>
<p>lax major requirements are by no means limited to liberal arts colleges, nor are they found in all (or most) LACs. LACs tend not to have graduate programmes, but there are some schools which are essentially liberal arts universities (Tufts, perhaps UChicago).</p>
<p>Sorry, allow me to clarify.</p>
<p>I didn’t mean that liberal arts majors are stuck with lax major requirements, that’s not at all what I meant. What I meant was that people who major in the liberal arts have a wider variety of career options as opposed to someone who isn’t an LA major, like Engineers, who were specifically educated for a specific occupation.</p>
<p>
A liberal arts major is anything in the social sciences (history, psychology, sociology, anthropology, etc.), sciences (biology, chemistry, physics, geology, etc.), or humanities (English, classics, religious studies, philosophy, etc.). </p>
<p>Majors like architecture, engineering, nursing, business, public health, etc. are not considered part of the liberal arts.</p>
<p>
It’s an interesting question, as there is no hard and fast distinction. Some LACs offer business (Skidmore), some offer engineering (Bucknell), and some even have PhD programs (Bryn Mawr) and law schools (Washington & Lee). Some LACs call themselves universities (Wesleyan), and some universities call themselves colleges (Dartmouth).</p>
<p>Liberal arts colleges are generally small (~2800 undergrads at most), award at least 50% of their degrees in the liberal arts (which is why Harvey Mudd is a LAC, not a tech school), and have either no or very small graduate/professional programs (they’re mostly undergrads). Although most LACs are coed, most single-sex colleges are LACs.</p>
<p>You can study the liberal arts at a university as well, and there is absolutely no difference in the job prospects between the two. A linguistics major at a LAC is no different from a linguistics major at a university. Neither type of school is “better” for a liberal arts education, and neither is more flexible than the other. </p>
<p>Where universities differ is they also have graduate programs, and graduate students can outnumber undergrads by as much as 2 or 3 to 1 at some universities (Chicago, Columbia). This includes programs like law, medicine, veterinary medicine, divinity, education, and PhD programs. Universities sometimes also offer pre-professional majors like business and nursing to undergraduates that LACs typically do not offer.</p>
<p>The above is correct. Liberal arts would be things like math, science, history, or sociology. This is compared to preprofessional majors (majors that are directly connected to a job, like accounting, architecture, engineering, prelaw/law, medicine/premed, etc.)</p>
<p>I’ve noticed a few schools are now calling themselves “Liberal Arts Universities.” Bucknell, Richmond, and Wake Forest come to mind. </p>
<p>Interesting tidbit: West Point and the Naval Academy are considered LACs. The other service academies may be as well, but I’m not sure.</p>
<p>Here’s what I’d consider a better answer. Pre-professional undergraduate education prepares students for entry-level positions in a particular career field. Students become competent technicians in their professions - at least in the state of the art as it exists in the years that they’re in college. The liberal arts train students in the timeless areas of inquiry that tend to prepare future leaders. At the undergraduate level, liberal arts students may study the “why” of various fields more than the “what.” Many CEOs and top administrators, including those in technical fields, are people who added technical skills training to an undergraduate liberal arts education.</p>
<p>And what’s a “university?” It’s a collection of colleges - typically an undergraduate college plus a graduate school, plus professional schools such as Colleges of Law, Medicine, etc. Liberal Arts colleges are typically stand-alone undergraduate colleges. And West Point and Annapolis are not / don’t consider themselves LACs. They just happen to demographically meet the definition that U.S. News uses in assigning institutions to one group or the other in order to compare apples with apples and oranges with oranges.</p>
<p>If that’s what a liberal arts major is, how can you market a liberal arts degree in the job market? Wouldn’t an employer prefer an accounting major over a math major anyway?</p>
<p>We can distinguish different kinds of “arts” by their objectives. Technical or industrial arts are devoted to making useful things in efficient ways. The fine arts are devoted to making beautiful, moving, or thought-provoking works. The liberal arts are devoted to helping a free person cultivate a good life, one that makes ample room for continual learning. They not only develop thinking and communication skills useful in any career, they also prepare you for the disciplined, worthwhile use of leisure time. A liberal education cultivates curiosity, observation skills, precise use of language, appropriate use of evidence, the enjoyment of artistic and scientific pursuits. It can help you become a more thoughtful, informed participant in community life. </p>
<p>The best undergraduate programs, at both liberal arts colleges and universities, bring students and teachers together in small classes that involve a great deal of discussion, experimentation, research, and writing about challenging problems of general interest to any educated person. There does not seem to be much difference among most very selective universities and LACs with respect to the undergraduate curriculum or teaching methods in the liberal arts and sciences. Most good students can choose between a university or LAC based on personal preferences (“fit”). The presence or absence of graduate programs can affect the quality of undergraduate programs in either positive or negative ways; the balance is worth exploring both as a general issue and in the context of specific schools.</p>
<p>Whether an employer prefers an accounting or a math major depends on the nature of the business and the work role. Based on self-reported data from alumni with terminal bachelors degrees, math majors apparently earn higher starting salaries than accounting majors and significantly more by mid-career ([Best</a> Undergrad College Degrees By Salary](<a href=“http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/degrees.asp]Best”>Common Jobs for Majors - College Salary Report)). The payscale.com data may understate the difference because, I suspect, math majors tend to pursue post-graduate degrees at higher rates than accounting majors.</p>