Talk:Liberal arts college/Archive 1

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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)