What is Liberal Education?
Liberal education has always set the standard for educational
excellence in American higher education. While the content
of a liberal education--in terms of courses and requirements--has
changed over time, throughout AAC&U’s 90-year history
liberal education has been a philosophy of education that
empowers individuals with core knowledge and transferable skills
and cultivates social responsibility and a strong sense of ethics and values. Characterized by challenging
encounters with important issues, a liberal education prepares
graduates both for socially valued work and for civic leadership
in their society. It usually includes a general education
curriculum that provides broad exposure to multiple disciplines
and ways of knowing, along with more in-depth study in at
least one field or area of concentration.
By its nature, liberal education is global and pluralistic.
It embraces the diversity of ideas and experiences that characterize
the social, natural, and intellectual world. To acknowledge
such diversity in all its forms is both an intellectual commitment
and a social responsibility, for nothing less will equip us
to understand our world and to pursue fruitful lives.
AAC&U Statement on Liberal Learning
Statement
on Liberal Learning approved by the AAC&U board of
directors (1998)
Often-Confused Terms About Liberal Education
Liberal education
A philosophy of education that empowers individuals, liberates
the mind from ignorance, and cultivates social responsibility.
Characterized by challenging encounters with important issues,
and more a way of studying than a specific course or field
of study, liberal education can be achieved at all types of
colleges and universities. "General Education" (cf.
below) and an expectation of in-depth study in at least one
field normally comprise liberal education.
Liberal arts
Specific disciplines (the humanities, social sciences,
and sciences).
Liberal arts colleges
A particular institutional type—often small, often residential—that
facilitates close interaction between faculty and students,
while grounding its curriculum in the liberal arts disciplines.
Artes Liberales
Historically, the basis for the modern liberal arts; the quadrivium
(arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music) and the trivium
(grammar, logic, and rhetoric).
General Education
The part of a liberal education curriculum shared by all students.
It provides broad exposure to multiple disciplines and forms
the basis for developing important intellectual and civic
capacities.
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