A Student S Guide To The Liberal Arts

An introduction to the the study of liberal arts for students coming into US-modeled college study for the first time.

A Georgetown professor’s look at the subjects one needs to study for a truly well-rounded education. A Student’s Guide to Liberal Learning is an inviting conversation with a learned scholar about the content of an authentic liberal arts education. It surveys ideas and books central to the tradition of humanistic education that has fundamentally shaped our country and our civilization. This accessible volume argues for an order and integration of knowledge so that meaning might be restored to the haphazard approach to study currently dominating higher education. Freshly conveying the excitement of learning from the acknowledged masters of intellectual life, this guide is also an excellent blueprint for building one’s own library of books that matter.

An excellent liberal arts education holds purpose-giving and society-shaping power. But how do we tap into that power and make the most of liberal learning for the glory of God? Professor Gene Fant teaches how to maximize a liberal arts education by outlining its history, criticisms, purposes, and benefits. Ultimately, he shows that liberal learning equips us to become spiritually and intellectually empathetic people who are passionate about serving God, the church, and the world.

“This slender volume explains the merits of getting an old-fashioned liberal arts education” (The American Spectator). College students today have tremendous freedom to choose the courses they will take. With such freedom, however, students face a pressing dilemma: How can they choose well? Which courses convey the core of an authentic liberal arts education, transmitting our civilizational inheritance, and which courses are merely passing fads? From the smorgasbord of electives available, how can students achieve a coherent understanding of their world and their place in history? In a series of penetrating essays, A Student’s Guide to the Core Curriculum explains the value of a traditional core of studies in Western civilization and then surveys eight courses available in most American universities which may be taken as electives to acquire such an education. This guide puts “the best” within reach of every student.

Each fall, thousands of eager freshmen descend on college and university campuses expecting the best education imaginable: inspiring classes taught by top-ranked professors, academic advisors who will guide them to a prestigious job or graduate school, and an environment where learning flourishes outside the classroom as much as it does in lecture halls. Unfortunately, most of these freshmen soon learn that academic life is not what they imagined. Classes are taught by overworked graduate students and adjuncts rather than seasoned faculty members, undergrads receive minimal attention from advisors or administrators, and potentially valuable campus resources remain outside their grasp. Andrew Roberts’ Thinking Student’s Guide to College helps students take charge of their university experience by providing a blueprint they can follow to achieve their educational goals—whether at public or private schools, large research universities or small liberal arts colleges. An inside look penned by a professor at Northwestern University, this book offers concrete tips on choosing a college, selecting classes, deciding on a major, interacting with faculty, and applying to graduate school. Here, Roberts exposes the secrets of the ivory tower to reveal what motivates professors, where to find loopholes in university bureaucracy, and most importantly, how to get a personalized education. Based on interviews with faculty and cutting-edge educational research, The Thinking Student’s Guide to College is a necessary handbook for students striving to excel academically, creatively, and personally during their undergraduate years.

Small college professors from across the United States explain why liberal arts institutions remain the gold standard for higher education. The fevered controversy over America’s educational future isn’t simply academic; those who have proposed sweeping reforms include government officials, politicians, foundation officers, think-tank researchers, journalists, media pundits, and university administrators. Drowned out in that noisy debate are the voices of those who actually teach the liberal arts exclusively to undergraduates in our nation’s small liberal arts colleges, or SLACs. The Best Kind of College attempts to rectify that glaring oversight. As an insiders’ “guide” to the liberal arts in its truest form the volume brings together thirty award-winning professors from across the country to convey in various ways some of the virtues, the electricity, and, overall, the importance of the small-seminar, face-to-face approach to education, as typically featured in SLACs. Before we in the United States abandon or compromise our commitment to the liberal arts—oddly enough, precisely at a time when our global competitors are discovering, emulating, and founding American-style SLACs and new liberal arts programs—we need a wake-up call, namely to the fact that the nation’s SLACs provide a time-tested model of educational integrity and success. “At last, some good news about education! This collection brings together essays by professors at small liberal arts colleges, voices largely unheard in the debates raging about higher education. It ranges widely through disciplines and across colleges, taking us into classrooms where we see the creative, inventive kinds of teaching that go on when classes are kept small and professors can interact with students. This book is a welcome corrective to claims that higher education is ‘broken’ and in need of a high-tech fix, a quiet reminder that ‘innovation’ goes on as a matter of course at colleges where teaching is top priority and is kept to human scale.” — Gayle Greene, Scripps College “McWilliams and Seery have achieved something remarkable: they have found a new and interesting way to present the case for the liberal arts model in American education. More than that, they have managed to show the value of, as well as present the argument for, the model. At its best, the book recreates something of the experience of a liberal arts education in microcosm. This is a wonderful, provocative, engaging, and moving book. It is unlikely to be surpassed.” — Simon Stow, author of Republic of Readers? The Literary Turn in Political Thought and Analysis