View of Liberal Arts degree?

[Pumpkin354]

Hi, I've always understood that Liberal arts degrees are not as well respected as a pure humanities or social science degree, but it seems to be the way forward nowadays if you want to mix humanities and social sciences with a bit of language (without having to do language 50% or only history/politics for example).

A number of the top universities seem to offer some variation now - UCL does ESPS and arts & sciences BSAC, Durham does a combined social science or a liberal arts, Bristol offers liberal arts etc.

Any opinions? thanks

Thanks everyone for the insights - a really interesting discussion.

@TizerorFizz im surprised about Esps being fulll of bilingual students as the literature (now at least) implies that they actively don’t want people taking a language they are bilingual in . French for example is for those having done a level? Or many languages can be done from scratch. It is on my DDs list but we are reading conflicting info re % modules for major language in Yr 1 - some places say 50% some more like 37% . Dd wants a bit of language but not half her degree.
@MajesticWhine would love to hear where your Dd went on Yr abroad? Was it specIfic to her language?

One possible issue I am seeing with the interdisciplinary degrees is that some do so many mandatory interdisciplinary modules esp in Yr 1/2 that there isn’t much room for choosing areas you really love? UCL Arts and sciences in particular and also Bristol lib arts. Durham as far as I can see not so much.

Hi @Pumpkin354 - she is in Madrid. Her major is Spanish. She's working in a school there as an English Language assistant. The amount of hassle she has had sorting out her visa and residency permit etc has been huge (thanks Brexit) but overall I think it's been a brilliant experience.

DS started out doing a multidisciplinary degree OP. His specific experience found it to be a little disorganised and that he felt a bit of an afterthought to every department. Despite reassurances at offer days , the workload was far larger than any of his friends'. That's the kind of thing I'd be digging into.

Thanks @Piggywaspushed yes I have heard that re workload. It’s odd though as surely if everyone is doing courses to a total of say 120 units per year, whether single or multiple subjects, the work/essay load should be the same?

@MajesticWhine yes a friend’s daughter said the same re visa 🤦‍♀️. Glad it’s been a success.

You would think so wouldn't you pumpkin? It was three times the number of lectures and five essays to do in the first six weeks. DS works phenomenally hard but he was overwhelmed.

What does a liberal arts degree equip you to do? What knowledge or skills would you have gained after three years?

It offers the skills and concepts to work across several disciplines - qualitative and quantitative methods, mathematical thinking, language arts, for instance. It makes you a very versatile thinker, able to incorporate methodology, concepts, material, and skills from across a wide range of disciplines, in the workplace, so it makes you a very appealing prospect to employers and graduate schools in many different disciplines.

It's how history graduates from American universities can end up becoming cardiologists.

Off topic, but it is also possible to study history in the UK and become a cardiologist. Three years history degree then either four years of Graduate Entry Medicine or five years of a standard course to qualify as a doctor. That said it’s both competitive and hard work.

I take issue with the idea that a liberal arts graduate isn't an expert in any given subject - this is certainly not true of the US, where undergrad studies take four years.

collegecatalog.uchicago.edu/thecollege/liberaleducationatchicago/
The objective of our faculty-taught general education courses—which constitute the major component of the first two years in the College—is not to transfer information, but to raise fundamental questions and to encourage those habits of mind and those critical, analytical, and writing skills that are most urgent to a well-informed member of civil society.

Just as general education provides a foundation for addressing key intellectual questions, the major program of study insists upon depth of knowledge and sophistication in a defined field. Majors afford students invaluable opportunities to develop and defend complex arguments through extended scholarly research.

@mathanxiety
Thsts what a decent arts/humanities degree does anyway! Just via modules related to one or two subjects instead of less depth in numerous subjects. Employers here simply wouldn’t see this degree as better. The ones I’ve seen don’t include much maths either. You could argue a first class management degree from somewhere like Bath would be more what employers want regarding skills and links with employers too.

I am a big fan for kids like my DD who are interested and good at lots of things but not exceptional at any one thing. She really struggled at school narrowing down subjects. Still does at uni.

I know Edinburgh is seen as third rate uni by some of mumsnet crowd. However they have a true interdisciplinary undergraduate degree this year ( as opposed to the usual semi liberal Scottish degree).

efi.ed.ac.uk/undergraduate-study/

My DD and her friend did a couple of the 1st/2nd year courses they were trialing. Said they were excellent. Particularly Students as Change Agents where students worked alongside the local community on a real problem.

I’ve never ever seen anyone posting who thinks Edinburgh is third rate! Not sure if these degrees are available at Oxbridge anyway! (Haha!)

@Pumpkin354 Have you looked at the Nottingham Lib Arts degree? from memory that really is flexible - and includes languages. They don't have major/minor routes.

Having said that DD started a Lib Arts course in September, and realised pretty soon that the course she chose wasn't for her. She has managed to switch onto another course where she had chosen some of the content as optional modules in Lib Arts, but is having to wait until this September to start it. Similar to Piggy's experience - very muddled, little guidance and lacking coordination by the Lib arts team. I think partly because it was a very new course - established courses like Nottingham, Birmingham etc seemed much more organised.

I think Liberal Arts degrees sound really interesting, I agree with @TizerorFizz in that I don't think they confer any advantage over a single or joint honours degree, it's more that they might suit certain students such as @SandyIrvine's DD who isn't quite sure what she wants to specialise in and would like to keep her options open.

The only 'issue' with them is that they are a relatively new development in the UK – nothing like as established as they are in the US – so some employers might not know a lot about them yet. That should change as more universities start to offer them. FWIW one of my SILs runs a recruitment agency (focusing primarily on marketing and communications, PR, editorial jobs) and she says she would be quite intrigued to interview a Liberal Arts graduate because she'd want to know more about their degree and what it entailed!

Do we think this is part of a more general move towards the US system of specialising later, at Masters level? I have mixed feelings about whether greater depth or greater breadth is the better approach… I suspect different approaches suit different DCs.

@thing47
I think that’s correct. When humanities/arts grads seek employment, I don’t believe they are quizzed at interview on their expertise on Henry V and wars or whether you prefer Jane Austin or Dickens! (Although DD was asked about medieval French!). So, it’s all the other skills you learn from your degree. Most decent grads have some skills but employers then want best fit and soft skills. The actual degree content is of little consequence. Employers may well know where universities sit in league tables and this is more influential than History or Liberal Arts. I think!

Universities have embraced new courses. It’s bums on seats with uncapped admission numbers! So why not offer this degree? It clearly suits some but others are very clear about what they want. It’s also a poor long winded and uncertain route to sciences!

Liberal Arts degrees have been around for some years now. I'd assume the company wasn't very forward thinking if they'd never heard of it.

@Seeline yes the Notts one looks good, but unfortunately no social anthropology which is not ideal. Durham have a good one too (Combined Social Sciences) which allows alot of flexibility. As I've mentioned before, with some of them you have so many core mandatory modules that there is no space left for choice.

@Pumpkin354
So is that really meeting a need for many students then? You would think that if you look at joint degrees at an academic university, they give quite a lot of flexibility within the degree. Combining options within large departments (2) must give a lot of choice. I think most students are happy with this. So although LA degrees have grown in number, they are a tiny minority of students and many recruiters won’t see them. Or expect to!

@TizerorFizz
None of my DCs who have done liberal arts degrees in the US have graduated without at least one year of statistics beyond AP level, and Calc III. Degree subjects have been theatre, economics, anthropology, psychology (private universities). One DC did a degree in biology with a minor in chemistry, and thanks to School of Liberal Arts and Sciences degree language requirements in their specific (state) university is fluent in German. The choices available to this DC for a language were German or Latin, based on courses taken in high school; an interest in beer tipped the scale.

The breadth vs depth idea is based on an assumption that the purpose of an undergraduate degree is to demonstrate mastery of a certain body of knowledge in a given subject. While you obv need to know your stuff when it comes to your major, I see in the eastward creep of the liberal arts idea an acknowledgement that it's the communication and analytical skills, the familiarity with a range of subject areas and ability to make connections among them, and the intellectual versatility involved in mastering abstract mathematical reasoning that matter. This means that the subject you take for your degree, while an indication of deep interest and knowledge, isn't necessarily what you're expected to work at, or more importantly, what you're confined to working at, for the rest of your life.

I can see a reassessment of the early specialization in English secondary education on the horizon, as liberal arts degrees become established in top tier UK universities and employers come to see the value of wider skill ranges. I suspect the IB will become ever more attractive too.

Either that or degrees that now take three years will shift to four, with a 'core' or 'general education' quotient taught in the first year(s) as in the US, and a multitiered third level system will become even more stratified, as there will be many students who can't hack stats or university level physics or English lit or a MFL.

Leading UK universities are also keen to attract international students who might otherwise head to the US - more and more, the centre of gravity in third level education in the anglophone world is the US.

@mathanxiety
But we are not in the USA. What your Dc did is somewhat irrelevant. Our A levels would need to change and we know we would set too many Dc up to fail by including stem for everyone. I know the PM is interested in stem but not by widening degrees. Widening school teaching.

Why would more Dc want 4 years and the additional expense? They might be more employable but the USA isn’t the only model for HE. Our standard extra year here is a masters. It’s honing skills. People can be financially risk averse hence not valuing 4 years for a broader undergrad course. We don’t have to follow the us either. We might need to revisit university places, finding and how HE is organised but we do have lots of foreign students at university here, and lots of people think we don’t need any more. I think we need a healthy valence but I don’t agree the USA is necessarily the right role model with its hugely expensive degrees.

I don’t see a major revaluation of the British approach. It will be too expensive, and there are advantages in early specialisation for STEM students.

Scope for broader education exists with IB and now with Liberal Arts, or indeed by going to a Scottish University and taking a four year degree.

That said I am surprised at Tizers stance. She clearly knows a lot about City professions, including law and banking. The City is amazingly international and people will know about Liberal Arts and may well assign a value to a broader education.

I am also surprised in that I understand that her DC attended a prestigious independent school. Numbers applying to the US from the UK private sector have shot up in the past decade. In part attracted by the possibility of studying Liberal Arts. (And presumably why UK universities are now offering the same.) This trend suggests that people do expect employers to value these degrees.

On a different point, what is this American thing about calculus? In the UK kids come across calculus at around 15, and do a lot more should they take A level maths. Yet in the US it is seen as a college subject.

For starters, the expense of US degrees isn't an across the board proposition. No two students pay the same price for a college education even in the same university, and across universities there are wide differences in cost. But more to the point, the question of cost of a US university degree is irrelevant to whether the US is the example other countries are currently following.

The reasons are not hard to understand. US graduates are versatile and highly employable. You seem to be dismissing this aspect offhand, but it's actually a really important element of the calculation of the worth of a university degree for students across all levels of ability. This is why British students are looking at the liberal arts idea as a good investment, and why leading UK universities which have already established this type of degree path will (imo) become more and more attractive to highly able and ambitious students, and will eventually expand to the full four year offering as the value of the STEM component becomes more and more obvious. People who are financially risk averse will see the value of a solid STEM component to a university education because the long term financial advantages outweigh the short term pain. British students who are able or willing to consider an American liberal arts education in America have increasingly done so for many years now.

It's a pity that it's assumed many students would be set up to fail at secondary level if required to take courses outside of their comfort level. The English system is an outlier internationally in terms of early specialisation; clearly there are many alternatives to the current system (including the IB, which already coexists with the A Level system) and clearly there is scope for adopting best practices from elsewhere to ensure the goal of lifting everyone to a higher standard is achieved.

A one year masters isn't going to hone skills that are not already there - it's going to narrow the degree of specialisation in a given area. A student with a masters in history or English or philosophy with a solid undergraduate base in quantitative analysis is a lot more attractive as an employee in a wide range of sectors than one whose focus since age 16 has been history, English lit, or other non STEM areas.

This is a really interesting thread. DD3 has an offer from the Liberal arts and Natural Science course at Birmingham, which includes a compulsory tear abroad. Does anyone have DC doing this course? Interested in contact hours, how well organised the course is and whether the degree is as flexible in terms of modules chosen by students as the website suggests. DD is interested in doing a major in chemistry, but likely to want to choose biology, history and Spanish among the minor subjects as well.

@mathanxiety you raise some interesting points, particularly around the likelihood that our DCs' generation is probably more likely to change jobs/re-train than ours is, but I don't see the British education system changing any time soon. Arguably each country has developed the secondary (high) school system which best suits its style of tertiary education; the US system is different but that doesn't make it de facto better. The reason we have early specialisation is that it fits in with our education system – for example the maths element of a Liberal Arts under-graduate degree is broadly in line with A level maths. DD1 already has A level maths, why would she benefit from studying it further only to get to the same level? She'd rather spend that time learning something she doesn't already know!

Don't get me wrong, I think Liberal Arts degrees are great, I'm all for them and I fully expect more universities to offer them in the future, but I don't think it will presage a wholesale change in the British education system. People have been saying for 20 years or more that the IB will replace A levels but it simply hasn't happened because it's not what our universities or businesses want.

And it just isn't true that a 'student with a masters in history or English or philosophy with a solid undergraduate base in quantitative analysis is a lot more attractive as an employee in a wide range of sectors'. Not in the UK at any rate. Employers are looking for expertise. If they want to employ someone with an English masters, they aren't going to give a fig whether that person has some sub-A level standard quantitative analysis experience. In the US maybe they do, but not in the UK.

@mathanxiety
It still remains the case that many uk students don’t want this and are not qualified to do it. For all your enthusiasm we are not the same as the USA. Or the rest of Europe. We do still have sought after degrees though. My DD1 did MFL. Maybe that should be a compulsory part of a degree too. So we can converse with other nations? People who like quants (so American!) can do them. If people want History or MFL, so be it. MN is always keen on playing to your strengths. Not sure why my barrister DD would need quants in her life but she can work out compound interest, savings returns, mortgage interest rates and all sorts of financial details of divorces without liberal arts and quants. Maybe she’s just good enough at maths to do her job?

@NiamCinnOir
its a niche course, isn’t it ? Therefore few will know it or have Dc on it. The key question seems to be: is it a sort of add on to established courses and is it coherent? What modules are actually available? Even joint honours takes second place after single honours on lots of courses when it comes to getting the options of your choice. So make sure it fulfills her aims. I guess you need an open day and to ask tough questions.

Those interested in other subjects still had the language as an additional skill, but did not "waste" an A level on something they already knew.

In our experience, bilingual students take their 'easy' language A level as a fourth (or even fifth) subject