Why Is It a ‘Liberal’ Arts Degree?

Look at the course catalog for a college or university that offers a liberal arts degree and you’ll find a vast array of academic interests. At Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, the No. 1-ranked liberal arts college by U.S. News and World Report, a student can earn a B.A. in American studies, economics, Japanese, sociology, or various other majors. But what specifically classifies a degree as liberal? The tradition goes back centuries and has nothing to do with modern politics. 

The word “liberal,” from the Latin līber, meaning “free, unrestricted, or possessing the status of a free man (as opposed to a slave),” originally appeared in Middle English in the context of being nobly born or a free-born person. However, the related Latin word liberalis meant “noble, gracious, munificent, generous,” and by the end of the 14th century, “liberal” had evolved to also mean “generous, magnanimous.” Over the next several centuries, additional usages for “liberal” developed: By the 16th century it meant “unrestrained, lacking discipline,” and by the early 17th century it was starting to be used as a noun to refer to a person who demonstrated liberal traits. 

In the 18th century, it took on the meaning of “free from prejudice or bigotry.” This reflected Enlightenment theory, which rejected the divine rights of monarchs and hereditary privilege, favoring reason, individual rights, and the rule of law. This is also when the political connotation of “liberal” developed. It comes from the French usage of libéral, referring to someone favoring government action to effect social change and support individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and societal reforms.

The association of “liberal” with education goes back to the 14th century, when a monastic education focused on intellectual pursuits, not necessarily studies for immediate practical purpose. The subjects of study were divided into two groups: the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy). Taken together, they were known as the artes liberales, or the liberal arts. Liberales comes from the Latin root meaning “possessing the status of a free man.” Only certain statuses of men qualified to receive a liberal arts education.

Six centuries later, the tradition of the liberal arts has been preserved in some ways, but it has opened up to a much larger population. A modern liberal arts education includes studies of the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and the arts, distinguished from vocational or mechanical training. A Bachelor of Science degree, by contrast, focuses on more technical pursuits, such as chemistry, physics, or engineering.