 Every university has a unique approach to education. Two-year colleges emphasize technical skills so that you can get a job tomorrow. Research universities, well, they do research. But what the fuck is a liberal arts college? Hello, my people, my name is Meacham. Today we're talking about liberal arts colleges on the Score Channel. What are they and should you consider going to one? Let's find out. There are over 200 liberal arts colleges in the United States alone and they're kind of in their own category. If you go to US news or niche to check out the rankings, you'll see that universities are separate from liberal arts colleges. Why do they need their own designation? Liberal arts colleges do things a little bit differently from a lot of other traditional universities. So let's break it down by taking a look at the name. Liberal Arts Colleges. The liberal part of the name has nothing to do with politics. It's strictly because the education is liberal in the sense that it is characterized by liberty. The liberty for you to explore a lot of different topics and the liberty of the programs themselves. You get a very broad education in a liberal arts curriculum. What exactly does this broad liberal curriculum cover? Liberal arts curriculums are divided into four key areas which are natural sciences, social sciences, the arts and humanities. Natural science, of course, will teach you things like biology and physics. Social sciences will look at human behavior and try to quantify it through classes like economics or linguistics. While humanities will take a more analytical approach to human behavior, you'll see things like philosophy and history in your humanities classes. When we talk about the arts, we're not really talking about making art. For the most part, you will be studying art. So taking a look at classic literature, learning about art history and really the role of art in the human experience. Not so much producing art as you would in a fine arts program. The idea of the liberal arts curriculum is that instead of getting a whole bunch of classes focused on one area, you're going to get a lot of general knowledge and more importantly, skills that will help you to develop later in life. Things like being able to learn independently and also having the ability to use different items from different disciplines. That interdisciplinary approach to learning is a cornerstone of liberal arts colleges. All of these skills that you get at a liberal arts college should prepare you for future studies or for insertion into the workplace. And speaking of future studies, it's important to point out that most liberal arts colleges do not have postgraduate schools. The majority of them are only for undergraduate students and that has a fundamental difference in terms of how the classes work and what the faculty does. At a typical research university, your most senior tenured professors are going to spend more of their time doing research. But at a liberal arts college, the professors are more focused on teaching. Since there aren't a lot or any postgraduate students, there's really nobody to help with research. These colleges tend to do less research but instead focus more on each individual present. Liberal arts colleges are also characterized by their low student to faculty ratio which means that your teachers will get to know you. This is something that was pointed out by Alexander Green when we interviewed him for Hillsdale College. Now we've talked about the liberal arts but what about the college part? In the United States, typically the word college in university are almost interchangeable. They're basically synonyms. Americans, when they graduate from high school, they say they're going to college and for the most part, there's really no difference. However, in practice, there are some subtle things. Colleges tend to be smaller. A university like Boston University has about 30,000 students but if you look at Boston College, the enrollment is about half of that. So when we see the term college, we should understand that it's probably going to be a small to mid-sized school and that's very true of liberal arts colleges. They tend to be in just a few thousands. They also tend to be located in smaller towns outside of big cities, although there are some exceptions. For some students, this can be a deal breaker. Maybe you really want to experience the big city life and also the big campus life and go to a football game at the big house with over 100,000 people. But at the same time, there's going to be plenty of events for you to do on these small campuses. You're still going to have opportunities to participate in sports or community-based events or different student-led organizations. Small campuses don't have less things to do. They just do them with fewer people. Of course, there are certain things that a big university could offer that maybe a smaller college cannot. For example, if you're really interested in doing a lot of research, you're not going to find those opportunities like we've already explained. If you're looking to work in more sophisticated facilities like laboratories, you might benefit from going to a bigger university. And of course, if you're looking for business partnerships to do co-op or get work experience while you're in college, it naturally makes sense to go to a big university that will have more connections. But there are benefits that you can get from a small college town that you just can't get anywhere else. And I'd like to point out a couple of those things. As someone who grew up in smaller towns and suburbs, I know this for a fact. There is a much greater sense of community at a smaller school. Not only because the community around the school is generally kind of small, which means you're going to get to know everybody in town from the people at the gas station to the people at the local 7-Eleven. But you're also going to get to know your students and faculty better. You're going to see the same people day in and day out. That brings closer connections. So what is the goal of a liberal arts education and how does it help you? Nancy Thomas, the director for the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education at Tufts University, has talked a lot about the liberal arts curriculum and what it means for students. The six goals that she identified for a liberal arts curriculum are to enable students to use knowledge wisely, think creatively, learn independently, make balanced choices, exercise judgment. That kind of seems like the same as the last one. And apply all these skills for the common good. If you take a look at those items, few of them are really academic. In fact, most of them have to do with you and your ability to handle yourself as a person. Liberal arts colleges very much focus on holistic development of each student and really want you to be more prepared to do bigger and better things after you graduate. The liberal arts education is kind of divisive. Some people think it is the greatest way to learn. Other people think it is a complete and total waste of time. It's funny because when I look back at my young days, I used to hate classes in school that I thought I would never use. If I didn't see a practical application for a specific course, I pretty much gave minimal effort. Young me probably would have hated a liberal arts education because I would have been studying all these subjects that I didn't see as necessary and I probably wouldn't have appreciated it much back then. As an adult, though, I think I would appreciate this now. There's something to be said about getting skills from a variety of different subject areas and being able to combine those to create new ideas and to use your creativity in ways that can solve modern problems. Major education reform leaders like Ken Robinson are all in agreement that we need to learn more interdisciplinary skills because the world that we're facing is constantly changing. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. Next week, there's gonna be a new problem that nobody has ever heard of and we're gonna need to combine a variety of different skills and knowledge sets in order to solve that problem. We have to go from what is essentially an industrial model of education, a manufacturing model, which is based on linearity and conformity and batching people. If everybody is a specialist, it's gonna be very hard for somebody to see the connections between those different areas and that is really what a liberal arts education is all about. It's about customizing them to your circumstances and personalizing education to people you're actually teaching. Being able to understand more than just your subject area so that you can take advantage of other people's specialized skills and I personally think that's a great thing. At the same time, I understand that a person who wants to major in engineering probably doesn't wanna sit there and take a bunch of philosophy and classic literature classes and that's okay. There are universities that have the programs that you're looking for. But if you're a student who maybe hasn't figured out what they wanna study yet or you're someone who still needs a lot of support with their learning, maybe you're not the most independent learner, a liberal arts college could actually be a great place for you. I see it as a really good stepping stone towards a master's degree so that you can specialize in the career of your choice. And I really feel that the small faculty to student ratio and the generally small campuses is gonna make it easier for you as a developing student to really perform well because you're gonna be surrounded by people who can support you. When you go to a big university, you're kind of on an island by yourself. So all that is to say that a liberal arts college definitely isn't for everyone but it could be a good fit for you. And if you're interested in learning more about those, subscribe to the channel because we're trying to schedule some university visits so that we can check out more liberal arts colleges and really show you what it's like at these very small schools. Also, check out our video that we did about Hillsdale College. That was the first liberal arts college that we covered and we're planning on doing a lot more. So stick around because you don't wanna miss those and I'll see you next week.