What is Liberal Arts?

Most high school curricula involve english, math, science (mostly in the form of physics, chemistry and biology), history, PE, foreign languages and some sort of fine arts (be it orchestra, chorus, art, etc). When one enters college, you find that the curricula are much more focused and you'll have your choice of disciplines from ever-expanding lists.

There is a concept in American universities referred to as 'liberal arts'. There are schools that are specifically focused on this and most larger Universities will have a collection of departments that fall under their School/College of liberal arts or something to that effect. Which raises the question "what exactly is liberal arts?"

Most liberal arts programs have begun to include science based majors as well and its fairly common to see schools of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Liberal Arts will generally include the following topics/majors/disciplines (give or take)

• Anthropology
• Classical Studies
• Communications
• Cultural Studies (generally divided into American, Asian, African, etc)
• Economics
• English and Composition
• History
• Humanities*
• Philosophy
• Political Science
• Psychology
• Sociology
• Theatre and Film (may fall under Fine Arts, varies by school)
• Women's Studies

*Humanities is the set of academic disciplines that studies the human condition and can include, performing arts, literature, classics, history, language, visual arts, music etc. Although depending on the school, some of these may fall under a separate division devoted to performing arts/music.

If you see Liberal Arts and Sciences, the list of disciplines generally expands to include

• Physics
• Chemistry
• Biology
• Mathematics
• Statistics
• Geology
• Astronomy
• and so forth

As always, each school will have their own way of categorizing the disciplines, but any Liberal Arts school or division within a school will include the topics listed above.