Artes Liberales at UConn

This becomes a stretch from a travel perspective, but I've got a lot more photos from the University of Connecticut, so I thought I would write a little about the origins of the term "Liberal Arts," which I never really thought about before this trip.

 

After a group orientation session, the parents were divided into smaller groups according to the intended majors of their children. I stayed in the main auditorium with the Liberal Arts parents, representing maybe a fifth of the total group. The professor at the podium began his remarks saying, "I don't know where all those other parents are going. Year after year, 60% of the graduation degrees are in liberal arts, regardless of the initial majors."





 

He went on to say that many students will change their minds about majors at least once or twice if not several times during their college careers. I know I did. He went on to talk about what the term "Liberal Arts" means.

The term originates in Medieval Latin as Artes Liberales. Artes means "subjects of study," and "Liberales" means "proper to free persons."

 

 Artes Liberales originally referred to seven subjects. Grammar, logic and rhetoric were the "trivium" leading to a Bachelor of Arts.

Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy and Music were the "quadrivium," leading to a Master of Arts. By the Renaissance, the term came to mean simply general education as opposed to vocational or professional education.

The idea is that if students graduate well-rounded in a broad variety of subjects, they will know how to think, and this will make them properly prepared to be trained to do many jobs. In the expanding age where careers may be measured in months rather than decades, knowing how to learn and apply general concepts to new jobs will be even more essential.