Liberal Arts and Sciences, A Liberal Education

For more than two thousand years our civilization has valued the idea of a liberal education. The assumption behind this idea is that knowledge and the search for knowledge are in themselves humanizing; that the exploration of the unknown both engages and reflects upon the exploring self. The end of a liberal education is the creation of knowledgeable, wise, just, and happy men and women, prepared to live productively and meaningfully in society. To achieve such an education, students must learn to analyze, classify, compare, discriminate, criticize, and evaluate the experiences which life offers; then they must learn to use these faculties both to develop the values and principles by which they will live and to master the knowledge, skills, and techniques appropriate to their more particular career ambitions.

The College of Literature, Science, and the Arts

The College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, founded in 1841, was the first duly constituted college of the University of Michigan. Today, with 15,000 students enrolled, it is the largest of the University's nineteen schools and colleges, and serves students from them all. It is dedicated to the idea of a liberal education and proposes to its students that they undertake their studies with like dedication.

Since graduates of the College go on to find employment in business, industry, and government, in the arts, in medicine, law, and other professions, and in scholastic or academic life, many students consider an LS&A degree the appropriate first step on their way to a successful career, and therefore use their undergraduate years to pursue particular fields of study related to their professional or career interests. Other students come to the College with rather undefined academic and career goals; for such students, LS&A is a place that enables them to forge their own paths, to explore themselves and their world, to develop new interests and deepen old ones. Some students regard college as a time to acquire skills in research, writing, and critical thinking that will serve them well in the years to come; others see it as an opportunity for personal growth, a chance to meet new people and new ideas, and to develop new pursuits and interests that will continue to affect their lives long after graduation. But the College hopes that all students, regardless of their future plans and career choices, will come to see the intrinsic value of a liberal education as an end in itself. In the history of LS&A (and American universities in general) there has always been a creative tension between the many different opinions on the purpose of a liberal education; in this matter, as in many others, the College is large enough to accommodate many competing, but not necessarily mutually exclusive, views. And in fact it usually is the case that the individual students' perspectives on their own education vary at different times during their college careers, and evolve and develop as their educational experience broadens and deepens. When students leave the College, they are prepared for employment or for further graduate study as well as for the larger human career of responsible life.

Students in the College come from all over the world and from a variety of social and ethnic backgrounds. Although the majority of undergraduates are between 17 and 22 years old, the age range runs from 15 to 65. Students study with a distinguished faculty of more than 930 professors who are responsible not only for teaching but for the kind of research and scholarship which enlarges the world of human knowledge itself. They are also actively involved in concentration advising and, together with a staff of general advisors, help students in their choice of courses, programs of study, and plans for the future.

Upon completion of the equivalent of four years of study, students in the College receive either Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science, or Bachelor in General Studies degrees.