Liberal arts college
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
A liberal arts college is an institution of higher education found in the United States, usually private, and offering primarily or exclusively a tertiary education leading to a bachelor's degree in a liberal arts program designed to be completed in four years' worth of study. Such a college may be distinguished from a university, which offers quaternary education and post-graduate degrees, and is more often larger and/or public. Small institutions of learning offer a more uniform experience across the student body than might be found at a larger university setting with more diffuse offerings.
Some institutions referred to as "liberal arts colleges" are distinguished from universities not so much by a difference in kind, but a difference in size, taking the form of small universities, complete with subsidiary schools dedicated to a particular specialized course of study and offering a limited set of graduate degrees. In this sense, large liberal arts colleges and small private universities occupy similar niches.
Most, though not all liberal arts colleges are funded through private donations and so take a large portion of their operating revenue directly from tuition. Private liberal arts colleges are thus often more expensive than an education from a taxpayer-subsidized community college, public university, or land grant university. Many have selective admissions procedures, which may be based on the academic and extra-curricular achievements of applicants during their high school studies, and on standardized test scores. Of course, this varies wildly; many liberal arts colleges are less selective than large state universities.
Liberal arts colleges
- Albertson College of Idaho
- Albion College
- Amherst College
- Antioch College
- Bard College
- Berea College
- Bryn Mawr College (all-female)
- Carleton College
- Christopher Newport University (public)
- Colgate University
- Cumberland College
- Colorado College
- Denison University
- DePauw University
- Dickinson College
- Earlham College
- European Graduate School
- Georgetown College
- Grinnell College
- Hampshire College (progressive)
- Haverford College
- Hillsdale College
- Hobart and William Smith Colleges
- Hope College
- Houghton College
- Kalamazoo College
- Kenyon College
- King's College (PA)
- Lewis and Clark College
- Marlboro College
- Marist College
- Maryville College
- Middlebury College
- Mount Allison University
- Mount Holyoke College (all-female)
- Oberlin College
- Occidental College
- Reed College
- St. Mary's College of Maryland (public)
- Sarah Lawrence College
- Smith College (all-female)
- Swarthmore College
- University of North Carolina at Asheville (public)
- University of Puget Sound
- Vassar College
- Wabash College (all-male)
- Wellesley College (all-female)
- Wesleyan University
- Whitman College
- Willamette University
- The College of William and Mary (public)
- Williams College
- William Jewell College
- The College of Wooster
External links
- Consortium of Liberal Arts Colleges
- Great Lakes Colleges Association
- Christian College Consortium: Christian Liberal Arts Colleges