The Value of a Liberal Arts and Sciences Education

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Liberal Arts and Sciences education once started in the ancient Greek as the well-known artes liberales. There were seven of them, separated in the trivium and the quadrivium. The trivium contained the core liberal arts, namely grammar, logic and rhetoric. When the Church defined the education, they extended the trivium with the quadrivium subjects arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. The Greek believed that every young man, if they could afford it, should be educated in the seven liberal arts in order to take an active part in civic life. The goal of these studies was to make a well-informed, virtuous and eloquent person. Nowadays, the artes liberales is still a renowned manner of education, but the methods have slightly changed. For instance, it is now called Liberal Arts and Sciences and it is divided in three academic cultures which together include all academic fields. These cultures are the humanities, the social sciences and the natural sciences. There are many colleges all over the world which offer a Liberal Arts and Sciences degree. An example of a Liberal Arts and Sciences College in modern times is University College Utrecht, a university located in the heart of the Netherlands. In 2012 I applied to be a student at University College Utrecht and was offered admission for the Fall 2013 semester. It was a long process to decide what bachelor programme to choose. It was an endless doubt between a regular degree and a Liberal Arts and Sciences degree. It was hard to make a choice, as it was impossible to predict what the future might bring. Today, I am convinced I have made the right decision to follow a Liberal Arts and Sciences education. As a Liberal Arts and Sciences student at University College Utrecht I hav... ... middle of paper ... ... often not well-informed or their information is out of date. In summary, I personally believe that a Liberal Arts and Sciences education is a way of thinking, not a type of institution. Liberal Arts and Sciences students will have a broader view on subjects because of their multidisciplinary education and their extensive knowledge. This has many advantages over the regular undergraduate students. For example, these students will become more valuable community members, will lead to more innovations and will be more effective and disciplined in conducting research because they are trained in academic skills. One might think that a Liberal Arts and Sciences education is too broad to be a good foundation, but they usually are not knowledgeable. All in all, a Liberal Arts and Sciences education is a better undergraduate programme than a regular undergraduate programme.

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