Liberal Arts College as a Provider of Particular Educational Experience
A liberal arts college makes the main emphasis on undergraduate study in the liberal arts and sciences. Thereore, its students generally major in a particular discipline while receiving exposure to a wide range of academic subjects, including sciences as well as the traditional humanities subjects taught as liberal arts. Furthermore, such institutions may be regarded as a college or university curriculum aimed at imparting broad general knowledge and developing general intellectual capacities oppositely to a professional, vocational, or technical curriculum.
The term "liberal arts college" was derived in Europe, but now it is commonly associated with the United States. The examples of such institutions in America are: Little Three, Colby-Bates-Bowdoin, and Little Ivy colleges in New England and the surviving, predominantly female Seven Sisters colleges along the northeastern seaboard.
Nowadays, liberal arts colleges are found in countries all over the world:
- Bishop's University in Canada,
- Concordia University in Montreal, Canada,
- John Cabot University in Rome, Italy,
- European College of Liberal Arts in Germany,
- University College Utrecht in the Netherlands,
- Foundation for Liberal and Management Education in Pune,
- India and Campion College in Sydney, Australia.
Generally, the liberal arts college in the US offers experiences characterized by three main aspects that differ it from undergraduate experiences in other countries:
1.Smaller size than universities, which usually means more individual attention is given to each student;
2.Residential (students live and learn away from home, often for the first time, and learn to live well with others). Additionally, the residential experience of living on campus brings a wide variety of cultural, political, and intellectual events to students who might not otherwise seek them out in a non-residential setting (though not every college has such strict residency requirements); and
3.A typically two-year exploration of the liberal arts or general knowledge before declaring a major.