Liberal arts serves as an indispensable personal and group endeavor that leads to individual transformation
The required courses provided by Humanitas College serve as a broad liberal arts education for all freshman and sophomore students who have not yet acquired a clear vision of what direction they wish to go in life and have little sense of the ultimate purpose of the undergraduate education. The critical intention of the liberal arts education is to create an intellectual and social environment for students that increases personal maturity and responsibility. Liberal arts is not a continuation of high school education, but a clear break with rote learning and passive instruction. The process of learning about diverse fields of knowledge in an interactive and interdisciplinary manner will suggest to students directions for their future careers appropriate to their own temperaments and the new trends in the world.
Liberal arts keeps the university from being reduced to a lottery in which the student picks a lifetime career as the age of 17 without sufficient understanding of the implications of that choice. Liberal arts makes the activities of the student in college critical to his or her life-long experience, not not merely a qualification for a job. During the course of their studies, students consider the answers to questions such as what knowledge is required for life and success, what is their responsibility to society and what are the duties of a university-educated citizen. Comparison with historical precedents and situations in other nations around the world will be critical to this process. So also the historical roots of the concepts we employ to describe the world and the institutions that we employ to administer ourselves will be investigated.
Liberal arts programs must provide a well-rounded education, avoiding a narrow focus in study that means pursuing a single major to the exclusion of all other learning. Universities should not limit students to vocational training from the beginning, thus limiting the ability of the individual to think creatively and act ethically. Universities produce cultivated humans, not machines. Excellence that lacks a vision and a soul will ultimately come to naught.