What is a liberal arts degree? - Part 1/9 • Mom Behind the Curtain

After reading the book Colleges that Change Lives, by Loren Pope, we seriously considered the possibilities of a small liberal arts college for our kids instead of a bigger, research university. Along with this came lots of discussions and considerations about the worth of a liberal arts degree. And what is a liberal arts degree anyway?

During one of these discussions my sister, who’s an astrophysicist professor at a university, made this comment.

“You know, Erin, you have a liberal arts degree.”

“Wait. What? Chemistry is a liberal ARTS degree?”

“I think pretty much every degree that isn’t a business or engineering degree is a liberal arts degree.”

Um, yeah, she’s right.

I would feel worse, but lots of people are vague as to what constitutes a liberal arts degree. Why are so many of use confused? I think most of us associate liberal arts degrees with small, private liberal arts colleges.

Because I didn’t get my degree from a small, liberal arts college, I didn’t think of my degree as a liberal arts degree. Besides, there were two types of degrees offered by my department. I didn’t get a BA (Bachelor of Arts Degree) in Chemistry. I got a BS (Bachelor of Science) degree in Chemistry.

I went to a smaller university. When I was there, it had a “teaching track” as well as a “research track” for professors. But it was still a university, not a liberal arts college.

The more we talked about the definition of a liberal arts degree, I realized that at some point when I was in college I may have heard my degree referred to as a liberal arts degree. But at that time that it clearly didn’t mean anything to me. More recently, I somehow started to think of a liberal arts degree as something that might be better described as a humanities degree.

But I still wasn’t too sure that what I had qualified as an “arts” anything degree.

But then my sister came up with the definitive answer.

“You can’t be in Phi Beta Kappa without a liberal arts degree.”

And I’m a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

I remember this because they keep send me letters asking for donations.

I’m starting to sound really cynical here, I know. But Phi Beta Kappa is an honor society, and I started getting cynical about honor societies when one jilted my older sister her senior year. (So I didn’t even apply to that honor society when I was eligible the next year. Ha! I showed them! But it didn’t hurt my graduate school offers, so I suppose it wasn’t too important. In light of the current AP and extracurricular arms race for admission to universities, I find that interesting.)

But Phi Beta Kappa becomes interesting at this point because I went to their website as a source of information on liberal arts degrees.

I’ll talk about that in my next post.

For now, I’ll leave you with the “definitive” definition of a liberal arts degree, from Wikipedia, “…the term generally refers to matters not relating to the professional, vocational, or technical curriculum.” In other words, any degree that isn’t a business degree, engineering degree, or technical degree is a liberal arts degree.

What about you? Do you have a liberal arts degree, a business degree, or an engineering degree? How easy was your job search when you graduated? You can read about the experiences of several people trying to get a job with an undergraduate science or math degree – which are liberal arts degrees – in my post, You Majored in What?