<p>I’m a senior year student in ethiopia.
I’m currently searching for schools.
I’ve heard just now about liber art schools.
But, what are they?
How do they differ from other common private/public universities.
I need more information about them.
PLEASE I’M DESPERATE.</p>
<p>They are basically small colleges that don’t have graduate schools attached, so they are completely focused on undergraduates. They usually try to foster a really strong sense of community and cooperativeness, and also work on making their students very well-rounded.</p>
<p>Many people have gathered together to respond to your concerns.</p>
<p>Read that thread in its entirety before begging further.</p>
<p>Yes, liberal arts colleges are good. In the way the national parks are good, or your mother is good. They have a value that is hard precisely to calculate.</p>
<p>These schools represent nearly the last trace of anything resembling a traditional, small town community in America, places where many people know each other, share a common sense of local identity, and perform all their daily activities inside the boundaries of that one place. They usually are rather old by American standards (>100 years), small (about 2000 students), and expensive (>$40K/student/year). They tend to be self-contained, well-bounded places, not integrated indistinguishably into urban surroundings. Often they are in beautiful rural locations.</p>
<p>Typically there is an old, centrally located chapel on one side of a square. At the other end of a long straight path from the chapel door, across the grassy tree-blessed square, is the library or another important academic building (with classroom buildings arranged around this grassy space on other sides of the square). Behind one side of the square is an athletic field; behind other sides of the square are dorms and a student center (perhaps occupying their own squares or “quadrangles”). Usually you can walk between any 2 buildings on campus within 10 minutes or so. Most parts of the college are likely to be visited at least occasionally by most students, though there may be mysterious groves and alcoves here and there that invite a sense of private discovery.</p>
<p>This physical layout reflects the divisions of the curriculum: the social sciences, humanities, physical and life sciences; heart and soul, brain and body. Both the campus and the curriculum forms a little model of the world (a microcosm), the stage setting for your education as a free citizen preparing to lead a complete, well-balanced life. With all the clamoring realities of life that daily challenge this ideal.</p>
<p>America’s modern university evolved from the liberal arts college model. It was a creation of the late 19th century, the height of the industrial revolution in America. It is basically a knowledge factory. It measures out the life of the mind in discrete quanta of knowledge expressed as published, highly specialized research papers and contract deliverables. The physical layout and curriculum is designed for an optimal balance of productivity and cost, with a nod to a few useless things (like the Classics department) still considered important by eccentric people too influential (and rich) to ignore. Buildings may be arranged rather haphazardly across a sprawling physical plant. Many students spend much of their time in lonely corners of the place, little replicas of the office cubicles they’ll inhabit daily in a few short years. There they focus on their specialties, intent on preparation for careers as productive worker bees, before returning nightly to rather impersonal high-rise dormitories (which often stink of beer, marijuana, and unwashed laundry). Loud concerts, sports spectacles, and copious consumption of alcohol punctuate the academic routine (as indeed they do at the more muscle-bound liberal arts colleges). By virtue of sheer size, and the variety of opportunities and temptations they offer, these can be very exciting places to spend 4 of the best years of your life.</p>
<p>Selective universities usually retain a traditional liberal arts college as an atavistic component. At the best of them, the old college of arts and sciences is a central, civilizing presence in the life of the whole community, like a nurturing mother in an otherwise increasingly dysfunctional family.</p>