I talked with two different families this past week that did not know what a liberal arts college was so I thought it was a good time to revisit some basics.

Liberal arts colleges are small, generally about 3,000 or fewer undergraduate students.  They typically have no graduate students so the teaching is focused on the undergraduates.

Liberal arts colleges have a focus on providing students an education that is not limited to one area. This is referred to as a liberal arts education. Typically, students in a liberal arts college will take courses in the first two years of college in many fields.

These might include humanities subjects like history, philosophy and art. They may also take classes in the social sciences like economics, political science and psychology.  And yes, they will include science and math classes.

The goal during these first two years is to help students learn to think in ways they may not have considered before and to learn to communicate both orally and in writing. For those of you who believe students should learn a trade in college, this may not sound very important.

But, if you can not communicate adequately in any job, you will not succeed.  If you can not think outside your own little world, when challenged with the changing society we live in, you may crash and burn.

After the first two years, students decide what they are most interested in and choose a major. During the last two years in college, the students focuses their education on classes in their major although they will typically still take a few classes outside their major.

All liberal arts colleges will have the basic majors like history, economics, math and, a surprise to many, chemistry, biology and physics.  Yes, the sciences are not only available at liberal arts colleges, they are often among the strongest science programs offered at any type of college.

The other distinguishing factor of the liberal arts colleges is that they only teach undergraduate students.  Most also don’t have business majors or engineering majors. The few that do treat these majors like any other major which you enter after getting the broad based education the first two years.

Most universities that teach undergraduates at a general college do so by providing a liberal arts education. Any one hear of Harvard College?  Yup, the basis of the education at Harvard is a liberal arts education.

When you are considering which colleges to apply to, if you are looking for a smaller college that will provide a great education, consider a liberal arts college.

 

 

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