A liberal arts education challenges students to learn to live with themselves, accepting who they are and may become. It lays a foundation for students who seek to live principled lives rather than being persuaded by power or the herd in order to achieve recognition or ephemeral happiness.
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What is liberal arts? In modern usage, the definition of liberal arts are those studies at the college or university level that are intended to offer general knowledge and build a foundation of logic and reasoning rather than to provide professional or vocational skills.
Employers acknowledge the value of a liberal arts education, which provides students with a strong set of skills, as well as opportunities to apply these skills in different contexts. Adaptability is an excellent trait in the work force.
Here’s 9 key reasons why you should study the liberal arts & sciences: 1. You learn how to think: With a liberal arts and sciences education, you learn to think critically, creatively, and analytically. Rather than taking everything presented to you at face value, you learn to delve into the whats, whys, and hows of the world.
The focus is entirely on practical training, so liberal arts are not included in the curriculum. Community Colleges offer two-year programs that lead to an associate's degree.
A liberal arts education builds students into freethinkers, open communicators, knowledgeable citizens, and respectable individuals. Many liberal arts colleges are focused on creating critical, creative thinkers that transform into citizens devoted to service, education, and acceptance of others.
The broader knowledge and understanding of the world a liberal arts degree cultivates helps students engage in some of the most important issues of today: the environment, foreign policy, social justice, national and international security, ethics, indeed, all of the issues we face as humans in relationship to others.
A liberal arts education prepares graduates for careers in education, the nonprofit sector, government, and professional services. Liberal arts majors also often work in public relations, marketing, and advertising — fields that require strong communication skills.
It introduces students to the art of deliberation and the ever-expanding world of ideas. It opens minds, enabling it to go wherever it wants, in the pursuit of enlightenment and understanding. It leans towards openness instead of close-mindedness.
The American Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC+U) describes liberal education as “an approach to learning that empowers individuals and prepares them to deal with complexity, diversity and change…” “It helps students develop a sense of social responsibility as well as strong and transferable ...
A liberal arts degree is not “useless” in the 21st century job market. In our increasingly evolving, globalized world, liberal arts colleges produce critical thinkers who have the confidence and flexibility to continually learn new skills and material.
Liberal education is an approach to undergraduate education that promotes integration of learning across the curriculum and cocurriculum, and between academic and experiential learning, in order to develop specific learning outcomes that are essential for work, citizenship, and life.
The American model of liberal arts education emphasizes freedom and experimentation as tools for students to develop meaningful ways of working after graduation. Many liberal arts students become innovators and productive risk takers, translating liberal arts ideals into effective, productive work in the world.
A liberal arts education provides perspective and raises the “why” question along with the “what” question. In a hierarchy that starts with information, then moves up the ladder to knowledge, and then even higher to wisdom, a liberal arts college aspires to be operating at the highest rung.
The purpose of the liberal arts perspective is to prepare students for problem solving of the real world practice challenges that they will find in their field work and throughout their social work career in development of the professional self.
A broad field of study, liberal arts comprises the humanities, arts, and sciences. Liberal arts education boasts a long history, beginning in ancient Greece. A liberal arts degree fosters key skills, like critical thinking and communication. Liberal arts colleges promote general education and creative problem-solving.
Liberal Arts: The Pros and ConsPersonal Enrichment. Majoring in liberal arts allows you to find yourself while still progressing towards a college degree. ... Transferability. Again, liberal arts degrees are highly transferable. ... Developing Professional Skills. ... No Professional Focus. ... No Job Market Preparation.
Liberal arts is a phrase that often gets tossed around when conversations turn toward education. Many are wondering if it’s even applicable anymore given the ever evolving job market and economy.
Montreal, “The liberal arts has a vital role acquainting students with our past and informing them about our present, providing a framework to envision possible futures. The disciplines that comprise the liberal arts ask and help students answer questions about who we are and what we are capable of, while imparting skills and attitudes that will propel them in their careers and their vocations, leading to lives of service.”
Liberal arts education benefits are vast; students get exposure to a wide variety of disciplines with opportunities to exercise and grow many different life skills. This all culminates to make them more qualified and prepared to interact with co-workers, clients, and society in both their field of study and beyond.
Some of the key skills a liberal arts education helps students develop include critical thinking and problem solving, analytical fluency, and excellent communication skills. All of these will prove vital as students enter a competitive global job market and advance in their careers and vocations.”. Liberal arts education benefits are vast; students ...
As Dr. Steve Montreal, dean of the school of arts and sciences, says, “Graduates with liberal arts degrees are prepared to make significant contributions in all areas of their lives – communities, workplaces, and churches – meeting the challenges and the promises of the twenty-first century.
A liberal arts education emphasizes rational thought and aims to develop robust critical thinking and analytical skills, problem solving abilities, and a strong moral compass. Fields of study include humanities, social sciences, physical sciences, and mathematics. The key element in defining liberal arts is the intent to combine practical, ...
A liberal arts education emphasizes the development of critical thinking and analytical skills, the ability to solve complex problems, and an understanding of ethics and morality, as well as a desire to continue to learn. Liberal arts are increasingly important in the diversified job market, with employers choosing to hire liberal arts majors ...
There are several branches of liberal arts majors, including humanities, social sciences, physical sciences, and mathematics. While attending higher education, students can select majors that fall under any of these categories. Humanities are academic subjects that focus on human culture.
Liberal Arts Colleges, as the name suggests, are institutions that focus heavily on providing a strong liberal arts education to all students in all fields. Usually, these are private, four-year colleges that tend to be more expensive than other institutions.
Mckenzie Perkins is a writer and researcher specializing in southeast Asian religion and culture, education, and college life. Liberal arts is a field of study based on rational thinking, and it includes the areas of humanities, social and physical sciences, and mathematics. A liberal arts education emphasizes the development ...
Davidson College (Davidson, North Carolina): Located just north of Charlotte, Davidson College has produced 23 Rhodes Scholars and 86 Fulbright Scholars. More than 80 percent of the student body study or work abroad during their tenure and just under 25 percent of students also participate in athletics.
Community Colleges offer two-year programs that lead to an associate's degree. They are frequently used as stepping stones toward a bachelor's degree, so students will complete their general education (and liberal arts) studies before going on to a larger university.
The liberal arts provide students the theoretical and practical tools needed to contribute to making the world a better place, which often begins by uncovering and confronting abuses of power . For this reason, these writers may need to rethink what exactly they value so highly.
An important learning outcome is to sensitize students to the plight of the marginalized, the neglected, and the oppressed.
The key skill utilized by Douglass to attain his freedom was learning how to read—a dangerous skill in antebellum America.
A liberal arts education challenges students to learn to live with themselves, accepting who they are and may become. It lays a foundation for students who seek to live principled lives rather than being persuaded by power or the herd in order to achieve recognition or ephemeral happiness.
Douglass understood that the important skills of reading and writing could serve as “the pathway from slavery to freedom.”. Literacy gave Douglas the ability not simply to understand himself (his status as a slave) and the world around him (the evils of slavery), but also to transform himself and his world.
They are always ready to alter a perspective for the sake of growing in wisdom, in the kind of knowledge that is truly life-affirming. They are not interested in dissimulating to give the appearance of consistency, for to do so, as Ralph Waldo Emerson reminds us, would reflect a small and troubled mind.
A true leader who has his or her priorities straight is more committed to the power of principle than to power over others. Through sustained reading and thinking, a liberal arts student has many opportunities to engage with principles.
At first glance, classes in the liberal arts don’t look like they have a whole lot in common. But examine them a bit closer and you’ll soon find that when studied as a whole, they lend insight to one another.
You won’t often find any required courses within a liberal arts degree. However, in an effort to create a well-rounded course of study, some schools require that students take a specific number of credits in the humanities, the arts, and in foreign language/culture within their program of study.
When you get down to it, today’s definition of liberal arts, or liberal studies as it’s more frequently being referred to in modern parlance, isn’t really all that different than those original definitions.
If liberal studies can be just about everything you study, then what does it mean to call a degree a liberal arts degree?
Liberal arts degrees often come in the same concentration areas as other arts degrees (AA, BA, MA), just like those listed above. You can earn a bachelor of liberal arts with a concentration in economics, or in history, for example. And, you’ll probably take many of the same classes that you would find in a traditional major in that subject.
The influence of liberal arts in modern American society is so pervasive that it can be hard to spot. But it’s difficult to separate the history of Western society from the liberal arts-based educational style that has grown up with it.
A liberal arts student receives an undergraduate degree after studying across fields ranging from the social and physical sciences to the humanities. Most liberal arts colleges offer majors and minors, where students select and specialize in a discipline, but they also have “course requirements” aimed at diversifying the courses in which each student enrolls. Future employers understand that a degree from a liberal arts college or university means that a student has completed coursework outside of his or her major and has learned about a variety of fields and topics.
Liberal arts students acquire broad knowledge across disciplines. This experience teaches awareness of the world beyond a single field, as well as an appreciation of the efforts and interests of peers, friends, and community members. A liberal arts education recognizes the inherent value of diversity: to understand the world and areas of study broadly makes someone more self-aware and more aware of society as a whole. Traditional liberal arts educations focused on shaping educated citizens, who would be strong contributors to their community, as well as specialists in a field. Today’s liberal arts schools uphold the importance of educational diversity, which will help make you a well-rounded thinker and community member.
You’ll find that you need a similar set of skills to be successful, nearly regardless of your major or career: strong writing abilities, advanced reading skills, the ability to interpret information, public speaking confidence, and critical thinking skills. This skill set can be gained in different fields and practiced in a variety of courses. Enrolling in a diverse set of college classes helps you develop these skills through repetition and exposure, as well as through application. You can master these skills as you apply what you learned in one class towards a different context in another one of your classes.
Here’s 9 key reasons why you should study the liberal arts & sciences: 1. You learn how to think: With a liberal arts and sciences education, you learn to think critically, creatively, and analytically. Rather than taking everything presented to you at face value, you learn to delve into the whats, whys, and hows of the world.
The College of Liberal Arts & Sciences offers more than 50 different majors in a wide range of fields, including sciences like biology and physics, social sciences like economics and psychology, humanities like English and history, and various foreign languages and area studies.
The development of critical thinking skills is a crucial component to graduate study, and an undergraduate degree in a liberal arts and sciences field can provide a head start where that’s concerned. What’s more, a liberal arts and sciences degree proves that you have the ability to learn across a diverse field of studies, which also provides a foundation of knowledge to go straight into graduate study in any subject you might choose.
Contrary to what some initially believe, the “liberal” in liberal arts doesn’t mean politically liberal. Rather, a liberal arts education is one that includes instruction in broad, central disciplines such as English, history, math, and science, and focuses on developing skills like problem-solving, critical analysis, ...
Despite these arguments in favor of career-oriented education, many highly-respected schools, such as Williams and Amherst Colleges and most of the Ivy League universities, still focus their undergraduate education on the liberal arts. Liberal arts and professional education programs provide different experiences to their students, ...
Because professional education programs are focused on teaching students what they need to know to be a doctor, nurse, or engineer, students that graduate from these programs are supposedly better prepared to enter the workforce than their liberal arts educated counterparts. For some professions, this is admittedly true.
Unlike the liberal arts, professional education focus es less on developing a broad range of knowledge, and instruction is oriented only towards the skills necessary to succeed in that field.
As the job market becomes more competitive , students and parents alike are increasingly wary of spending the money for a degree they fear won’t help them get a job. The result is a shift in the educational world towards “professional” or “career-oriented” programs – paths that prepare students specifically for one field of work, ...
However, nearly all students are familiar with a liberal arts education, even if they haven’t encountered it in these contexts; general education requirements at any public or private school are examples of a liberal arts education.
While the lack of academic diversity in professional education is considered an advantage by some, there are also those who believe it puts students at a disadvantage in our rapidly shifting world, where the technical skills taught in school can easily become obsolete given the changing professional landscape.