Talk:Liberal arts colleges in the United States

Split?

Why was this split out of the liberal arts college article? As should be obvious from the name "college," liberal-arts colleges are mostly if not exclusively a US phenomenon, so I don't see the need for two separate articles. -- Rbellin|Talk 21:54, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

True, many LAC's are in the U.S. - but as indicated on this list: List of liberal arts colleges, there are liberal arts colleges outside of the U.S. as well. As is, the article, Liberal arts college prior to the split seemed in violation of WP:UNDUE as it was mostly about schools in the U.S. - and also seemed to violate Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias as it did not give a global view of liberal arts colleges. The split solves the problem - the main article now has a more global approach. I will go ahead and add a sentence to the main LAC article which indicates that while most colleges are in the U.S., there are liberal arts colleges in other countries as well. -Classicfilms 22:25, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand -- this seems like a very strained interpretation of policy to me. If most LACs are in the US (as seems indisputable), it cannot possibly be a violation of WP:UNDUE for most of the article to be about LACs in the US. That would be giving exactly due weight to the subject. Nor is it an example of systemic bias for an article about a thing that exists primarily in the US to treat the US heavily. I still don't see a need for the split article rather than a little more detail on the subject in one article. Can you clarify why splitting the article into two, rather than providing more detail on the subject (and information about whatever scattered examples exist outside the US), is the better option? -- Rbellin|Talk 23:30, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm not certain I understand the objection - as the main article now discusses the general concept in a global sense and the new article focuses directly on the topic of LAC's in the U.S. -Classicfilms 00:01, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

My point is, briefly, there is no "general" or "global" idea of the liberal arts college that needs an article of its own, and the separation of the two articles creates the superficial appearance of globalizing Wikipedia only at the expense of both articles' accuracy and succinctness. I see this as something like creating an article on the "global idea of the bagel" and then removing all of the content specific to New York. The few non-US LACs, most/all of which are explicitly patterned on the US form of the institution, can easily be handled in a few paragraphs, and there's no need at all that I can see to create a separate subarticle here. -- Rbellin|Talk 01:25, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Ok, let's try to work towards a compromise. If the two articles are merged again, the article needs to be rewritten with a sourced history section (which it currently lacks)-

a. The origins of the liberal arts college were in Europe - and were the standard in Europe for some time. This is discussed in detail in Allan O. Pfnister's article, "The Role of the Liberal arts college: A Historical Overview of the Debates" in the "Journal of Higher Education", Vol. 55, No. 2, March/April 1984, pp. 145-70. Also available here via JSTOR: http://www.jstor.org/view/00221546/di962488/96p0027o/0

Specifically, pp. 147-148 reviews the history and the impact on the early colonies when similar colleges were formed. This is just one convenient source - any will do of course...

b. Some discussion of the development of liberal arts in the U.S. would be nice - Pfnister's article has some discussion (mostly debates) but others will do-

c. A brief mention that liberal arts colleges are also outside of the U.S.

My main objection to the original article lay in the section headers which all had the words "United States" in one way or another (General background, rankings, SATs) - which is why the weighting of the article appeared to be off. If the article were re-written this might fix the problem - Classicfilms 04:02, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Everything you propose here sounds basically good to me; I wouldn't want to suggest that the previous state of the article was particularly great, just that I don't see the point in splitting it in this way. The section headers certainly don't all need to mention the US, especially if the article's lead makes clear that LACs are predominantly a US phenomenon. Thanks for the link to that Pfnister article, it's an interesting read -- but I don't think it makes quite the historical argument that you are claiming it does. I don't think it argues that the things we call liberal-arts colleges (that is, predominantly undergraduate institutions) "originated" in Europe -- but rather, that when created in the US, they were modeled on some components of the European universities and pre-university schools. This history is somewhat convoluted, and that article is making a (fairly plausible) particular argument about some under-recognized precedents for the current form of the LAC, but really it's not too controversial to say that nothing fitting the current meaning of the term LAC (that is, bachelor's degree-granting institution specialized in the liberal arts) existed much before the 18th or 19th century in the US. Across Europe the bachelor's degree always remained the exclusive province of the universities, as far as I'm aware. Getting more of this history into the article should be our goal, but we should really have more authoritative sources than just the one Pfnister article (which, as I say, is making a particular argument rather than summarizing the commonly prevailing version of the history of higher ed in Europe and the US). -- Rbellin|Talk 05:23, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't think anyone would disagree with the statement that LACs, as they exist now, have a distinct character that is specific to their development in the U.S. However, a responsible encyclopedia article should clarify the origins of LACs - and I have never heard a discussion about LACs that did not discuss their roots in Europe - which is to say that what we have now was derived from models in Europe, which is what Pfnister was referring to. And there's a lot out there on this subject - I've found a few more JSTOR articles, though I'm sure there are better books in the library - I'll list a few here -

"Antecedents of the Liberal Arts College," Philip Harriman The Journal of Higher Education, http://www.jstor.org/view/00221546/di962074/96p0148k/0

This essay offers a detailed account of the origins of liberal arts colleges back to the middle ages.

"The Liberal-Arts College" Floyd W. Reeves, The Journal of Higher Education, http://www.jstor.org/view/00221546/di962034/96p0137g/0

p. 375, "The liberal arts college, English in origin, is now the most distinctly American feature of our educational system."

"Saving the Small College," George Seidel, The Journal of Higher Education, http://www.jstor.org/view/00221546/di962375/96p0021i/0

p. 339, "If one views the American system of higher education as a combination of the English liberal arts college and the German university, what we have in the United States at the present time would appear to be essentialy an English B.A. program and a German Ph.D. program with an M.A. transition in between." -Classicfilms 06:03, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

I would also have proposed a re-write and merger, but is this discussion now dead? Aepoutre (talk) 21:04, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Stonehill now part of the SAT Optional Movement

I am applying to this school and on the supplemental application they put

"Please check off whether or not you want your SAT or ACT scores to appear on your application. If you choose yes, you must submit your scores with your application."

They're technically part of the standardized test optional movement but since the whole reason they did this is probably because of the SAT's. It should be worth noting. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.123.251.204 (talk) 21:57, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Difference between LAC and national universities

This article does not highlight the difference between liberal arts colleges and universities, and in my opinion it should do so. If a foreigner reads the article, he would like to know what is fundamentally different between a university (like New York University) and a LAC (Amherst College). Someone should add this information. Chimeric Glider (talk) 19:41, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

SAT Optional Movement clarification

This needs to be explained, while one can get a general idea of the concept from reading the examples, the movement is never explicitly described. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.144.64.86 (talk) 01:41, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

2007 Rankings Movement

It seems like this is a lot of information about a very specific instance with US News and World Report. The information in this section is very detailed, but does not include the reason why the Annapolis Group called for schools to cease participating in US News and World Reports survey. It seems like it would be best to do a quick overview of the reason for this movement and result of the movement, but to leave most of the detailed information to the article 'Criticism of college and university rankings (2007 United States)' to describe.EtanaLF (talk) 22:41, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

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Oldest Colleges List Needs Updating

Washington and Lee University, known as Washington College by 1813, should be on this list. The wikipedia article on the college will substantiate this. I intentionally did NOT make the change because I wasn't sure how to edit the table without introducing errors. LOL — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1003:B01C:C221:81D2:C42C:ED12:1986 (talk) 17:50, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

Scope of this article?

@ElKevbo, I noticed this edit you made. In one sense, it's just a manifestation of the perpetual MOS:EGG vs. MOS:SPECIFICLINK conundrum, but it also raises questions about the appropriate scope of this article vs. liberal arts college. The idea of a liberal arts college is so closely tied to the U.S. model that I'm not sure it makes sense to have a separate page. An option I lean toward would be to have something similar to what we do for Student newspaper, where there's a global article, but if you want a specific country, that's List of student newspapers in the United States, which includes any general country-specific information in the lead. For that, we'd merge parts of this article to liberal arts college and the rest to the lead of List of liberal arts colleges in the United States. Thoughts? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 03:38, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

I am amenable to the proposed changes. I don't know enough about postsecondary education outside of the U.S. to make a confident judgment on my own but the reasoning presented seems to be sound and matches my intuition. ElKevbo (talk) 17:38, 10 April 2022 (UTC)