Liberal arts college

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A liberal arts college is an institution of higher education found in the United States, usually private, and offering primarily or exclusively a tertiary education leading to a bachelor's degree in a liberal arts program designed to be completed in four years' worth of study. Such a college may be distinguished from a university, which offers quaternary education and post-graduate degrees, and is more often larger and/or public. Small institutions of learning offer a more uniform experience across the student body than might be found at a larger university setting with more diffuse offerings.

Some institutions referred to as "liberal arts colleges" are distinguished from universities not so much by a difference in kind, but a difference in size, taking the form of small universities, complete with subsidiary schools dedicated to a particular specialized course of study and offering a limited set of graduate degrees. In this sense, large liberal arts colleges and small private universities occupy similar niches.

Most, though not all liberal arts colleges are funded privately and so take a large portion of their operating revenue directly from tuition. Liberal arts colleges are thus often more expensive than an education from a taxpayer-subsidized community college, public university, or land grant university. Many have selective admissions procedures, which may be based on the academic and extra-curricular achievements of applicants during their high-school studies, and on standardized test scores. Of course, this varies wildly; many liberal arts colleges are less selective than large state universities.

Liberal arts colleges

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