What is a Liberal Arts degree?
One of the questions we get asked most is “What is a Liberal Arts degree?”. Even despite Liberal Arts being the top of the student interest tables, when we visit schools and colleges, or students come to our open days, it’s still the first question. So without turning our first blog post into an essay or a marketing spiel here is our answer.
In short, it's the greatest questions that continue to inspire the most significant human, cultural and scientific achievements. These questions and achievements then form the curriculum that we study. And part of what makes it so interesting is that you get the freedom to bring your own questions to these people and their ideas.
So in this way Liberal Arts is a different kind of degree. In many ways it is formed around your questions and interests. So while it might feel like a new degree to you, and because of you a new degree to us, it is also the oldest form of higher education in the Western tradition. In many ways it is where the idea of higher education began. It contains ideas and research from the well known academic subjects (psychology, history, sociology, art, English literature, political studies, religious studies, media studies, physics etc.). But liberal arts is not limited by any one subject boundary.
We like to think of Liberal Arts as philosophical study across humanities, social and natural science, and the arts. And while this means liberal arts is philosophical it is also very different from doing a singular philosophy degree. It’s ideal for you if you can’t fit your own interests within one or two single subjects, and you want to expand your knowledge, thinking, and understanding beyond “doing one thing”.
It is a course that isn’t afraid to ask the big questions and we encourage you to explore you own answers.
So now you know a little about what a Liberal Arts degree is, you can always come and see us to find out more.
Read more about liberal arts from one of our past students > Maia talks about liberal arts education.
In an upcoming post we’ll be looking into the meaning behind this:
