Liberal Education

Liberal education means a program providing broad exposure to multiple disciplines, along with critical, intellectual, and social skills, essential within every area of life, in every career. It empowers individuals with a strong sense of ethics and values, preparing them both for work and civic leadership.

Liberal education programs usually include a general education curriculum shared by all students. This forms the basis for developing important intellectual and civic capacities. The general education curriculum is  followed by more in-depth study in at least one field of concentration.

One important factor of the learning process is each student’s responsibility in creating his/her program. This is why students enjoy considerable freedom in course selection, which however is set within a predefined methodological framework, according to distribution requirements.

In the United States, liberal education has always been one of the most influential approaches in higher education, setting the standard for educational excellence. It serves as a teaching philosophy, to a greater or lesser extent, in all types of colleges and universities including Princeton, Dartmouth, or Harvard.

One institution that embraces liberal education is the liberal arts college – often small, usually residential – that facilitates close interaction between faculty and students, while grounding its curriculum in the liberal arts disciplines (the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences). Class sizes are small, and the student/faculty ratio is lower than in other types of institutions.

Some well-known liberal arts colleges in the United States:

• the "Little Ivies" (among others): Swarthmore College (Pennsylvania), Amherst College (Massachusetts), Williams College (Massachusetts)
  
• the "Seven Sisters" (among others), a group of old colleges in the Northeast, including among others Bryn Mawr College, Wellesley College, and Vassar College; all of these used to be women's colleges, and some still are.
  

(Based on The Association of American Colleges and Universities)