Just how good is the Penn State College of the Liberal Arts?
You’ve heard the claims–“we’re a top Liberal Arts college”; “we give students an experience that is on a par with the very best”; “our faculty and students are world class.” But how legitimate are those claims? What justifies the belief that you’re attending a university and College of the Liberal Arts to be proud of?
Perhaps the most prestigious measure of academic quality for universities that have graduate programs as well as undergraduate ones is the rating created by the National Research Council (NRC) on behalf of the National Science Foundation. In the NRC’s latest ratings, a host of Penn State departments–including a great many in Liberal Arts–were ranked in the top 10%. Spread the word–especially if you happen to be majoring in one of these Top 10% Departments:
- Anthropology–Spanish
- Sociology
- English
- Political Science
- Communication Arts and Sciences
- Philosophy
- Non-Liberal Arts departments: Nutrition, Individual and Family Studies; Biology; Kinesiology; Entomology; Environmental Engineering; Math; Physics; Statistics; Chemistry; Geosciences; Electrical Engineering.
Many other departments in Liberal Arts were ranked nearly as high–Psychology and Economics, for example. (Note that the NRC rankings don’t involve every field; they attend especially to fields in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities.)
You can be proud of the Penn State education you are getting and the faculty with whom you are working. For complete details, consult the National Academies Press.