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Archive 1
The term "liberal" in "liberal arts" originally refered to "free men," eg those citizens of the republics of classical antiquity and a generalized education thought to be most proper for these social and political elites.

I've never heard that before. I have always heard that "liberal" in "liberal arts" means essentially "freeing the mind." Do you have some evidence for the above statement? --LMS

That's the way I originally remembered hearing it "education for free men". So my original reference is, I guess you could say, "oral tradition".

I might have gotten it in this form because Wabash College retains an all-male student body, and so there has not yet been a need there to change the definition so much (presumably) to fit gender-inclusive language appropriate for institutions that switched to (or were founded to provide) co-education.

For sources located after-the-fact of my entry, try these: 

*http://www.google.com/search?q=%22liberal+arts%22+free+men&btnG=Google+Search
*http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01760a.htm
*http://www.uca.edu/divisions/academic/libart/dean.htm

And so on.

Well, I think it's still misleadingly worded. I'll explain in the article itself. --LMS

Yep, Mortimer Adler was especially fond of the 'education for free persons' explanation; one of his most important sources was John Cardinal Newman's The Idea of a University and the opposition of training and education. --MichaelTinkler

I like the "despite the etymology" bit.

Anyway, it's mostly a fair change, despite the vague and unsupported (prejudices, you say?) qualifiers, which I've removed.

I've also moved LMS modification to the "liberal arts" definition down a bit, to restore the flow of the original paragraphs.

Further, I've removed the "university level" education stuff from the first paragraph, retaining the United States qualifier as better than my original, but wrong, use of "American".

I removed the "university level" bit mostly because the distinction between liberal arts colleges and universities is already addressed deeper in the article in several ways. Not all LAC's are just "small universities". In my experience, at least some see themselves as qualitatively different. Much of the article tries to draw out that distinction, and refering to them more directly as "small universities" clouds the distinction.


--JoeAnderson

I included "university-level" because people in some countries (e.g. mine, Australia) have nothing like liberal arts colleges, only universities -- the "university-level" was to explain that they were offering education with the sort of academic rigour one would expect from a university, as opposed to the sort of courses one tends to find in vocational schools (what we call in Australia TAFEs -- I don't know what they are called in the U.S., if you have them at all.) -- SJK

Sorry, those deletions were my mistake -- I accidentally edited an old version of the page, so some additions in the intervening time were erased. Thanks for correcting my mistake. Conover 19:48, Apr 3, 2004 (UTC)

No problem. Bkonrad | Talk 20:01, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Dartmouth?

I see that Dartmouth College is not on this list, but prior to adding it, I thought I should consult. In national rankings (U.S. News & World Report, Princeton Review, etc.), it is usually lumped in with research universities. Properly speaking, Dartmouth is a university as it does have graduate schools and does conduct research, but its fundamental basis is as a liberal arts college. So what do you think? Basically, this depends on how strict your definition of "liberal arts college" is. Dylan 13:57, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

  • I agree with you; Dartmouth's classification as a research university seems somewhat arbitrary. Wesleyan U. (perhaps Dartmouth's closest relative, program-wise,) also conducts research, but remains classified as a liberal arts college. The basic difference: Dartmouth enrolls about 2,000 more students. Size matters, I guess, (to the Carnegie Foundation, anyway.) 71.234.216.249 00:10, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
I would agree that Dartmouth is, at its core, a liberal arts college. It should also be pointed out here that it is (arguably) the Ivy League college most committed to undergraduate education, which adds to its liberal arts college reputation. Beginning 02:02, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Colgate photo

I think that the photo of colgate in 'mid-august' is not completely right. Most of the trees in the picture seem to have already changed color, and because the label continues to say that it is near the end of summer, I believe that this photograph is actually taken from mid-september. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.6.241.82 (talk • contribs)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

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Merge lists

I placed a merge tag with the list of colleges by country. It might be a good idea to merge this list as is to the longer list of colleges - and re-organize that list by country. Or, have two parts to it, one which is alphabetical, and one which is by country. There is already a subarticle called List of liberal arts colleges in the United States. -Classicfilms 20:44, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

I merged the list from the liberal arts college page and reorganized this list by country. This follows a similar list,List of current and historical women's universities and colleges. Also the list of schools in the U.S. is organized by state in a similar fashion - List of American institutions of higher education. -Classicfilms 16:07, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism?

Someone is vandalizing this entry repeatedly. Suggest either locking it or revoking the offending IP's editing privleges. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.158.103.194 (talk) 19:12, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Are there really exact requirements to be considered a liberal arts school

I always thought it was a relatively silly label, simply because almost every university or college has a possibility for a degree in humanities. Like in Music, arts, History, literature, Mathematics (I think every university has math majors) and Science (come on is there any university without a biology degree). Even the so called Liberal Arts University I attend has a business department with accounting, marketing, finance, and others. So exactly what is the so called liberal arts label suppose to say??? Is it suppose to be a good or bad label when applying for a job? How about if applying for graduate school? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.253.249.55 (talk) 22:04, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

The "liberal arts" label is imprecise, but it can be correlated with categories from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, notably the "Arts & Sciences Focus." --Orlady (talk) 22:24, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

But is that suppose to mean that its a less advanced school? If someone mentions they went to a liberal arts school when, say applying for Harvard Law, is that looked down upon? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.253.249.55 (talk) 22:55, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

It does not mean it is a less advanced school, but a less complete school. Such schools, at least in many cases in the USA, will center around a "College of Liberal Arts and Sciences", and will lack a substantial "College of Engineering". Schools that predominantly center around a "College of Engineering" are often considered technical (or polytechnic) schools (colleges, universities, institutes), but will often nevertheless provide some education in liberal arts and sciences. I don't think that a liberal arts education or an education from a liberal arts college will necessarily be looked down upon in many situations, but if one wants to go for an engineering graduate education or job, then the candidate may well be at a disadvantage. In many cases, a "College of Liberal Arts and Sciences", sometimes simply called "College of Arts and Sciences", is a catch-all for many types of majors and curricula that do not belong in in more specialized type of college such as engineering, business, or professional schools. H Padleckas (talk) 08:29, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

About the proposed merger with Liberal arts college

I realize both articles, Liberal arts colleges in the United States, and Liberal arts college, are rather small, suggesting a possible merger, but what I think will probably happen is that -- if the two articles are merged -- that the combined article will be mostly about US liberal arts colleges, and then someone will come along a place a tag on it complaining that there is too much emphasis on the U.S. So I am leaning towards keeping the two articles separate for the time being, unless of course somebody could make a case that liberal arts college in the US, and not in the US, were essentially similar; I suspect there are wide differences.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 19:09, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

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