<p>tk21769,</p>
<p>“Liberal arts education” as defined in this thread appears to me to be uniquely American. </p>
<p>Some continental European countries, e.g. France, have a broad, comprehensive secondary school education that is somewhat reminiscent of a “liberal arts curriculum”, but, unlike in the US, have specialist bachelor’s/master’s degrees at the university level.
On the other hand, in countries like the UK, specialization begins even earlier (in High School actually, with the A-Level system) and undergraduate degrees are very specific, although it is sometimes possible to concentrate on two or, more rarely three, related subjects, e.g. Economics and History; Philosophy and Mathematics; Philosophy, Politics, and Economics; Mathematics and Computer Science; etc. There are also a few courses like Cambridge’s NatSci Tripos that allow you to study physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics equally in the first year and then specialize later. However, there is nothing comparable to a “general education” or “liberal arts curriculum” as in the US, nor there is a widespread opinion that such general education program should be either useful or have any meaningful advantage over a specialist degree. </p>
<p>I guess one could try to compare a continental European, a British-patterned, and a US-styled LAC education based on objective metrics for outcome and attainment, but such comparison is tricky considering that those metrics are affected by other external factors (e.g. national or personal income, university funding, social class and overall social structure, etc.) that would have to be carefully controlled in any reliable study. In other words, arguments are never as simple as “LACs produce a large number of future PhDs, hence LACs are good”. </p>
<p>Also, as mentioned before by someone in the thread, there are “liberal arts education and liberal arts education”. Just to illustrate with (statistically meaningless) anectodal evidence, out of the total population of US students, both in High School and in college, who take one or more foreign language classes, what percentage do you think can be considered to have a real functional knowledge of the language they are studying ?</p>