Small is beautiful. This is no longer true at least for universities in China. Colleges are disappearing. Universities are merging. Institutions of higher education are expanding at an alarming speed. However, in the United States, there are a large number of institutions of higher education who still believe firmly in the beauty of smallness. They are called Liberal Arts Colleges.

Liberal arts colleges are undergraduate institutions known for being residential and for having intentionally smaller enrollment, class size, and teacher-student ratios than universities. Their curriculums are aimed at imparting general knowledge and developing general intellectual capacities, in contrast to a professional, vocational, or technical curriculum. Liberal arts colleges also encourage a high level of student-teacher interaction at the center of which are classes taught by full-time faculty rather than graduate student Teaching Assistants who teach some of the classes at Research and other universities like Harvard, Yale and Stanford.


Westminster College
The existence of small residential liberal arts colleges is distinctively American. No other country has schools committed so clearly to the highest quality of undergraduate education. Though small in number when compared to America's large public universities, liberal arts college graduates are represented disproportionately among leaders in the arts, education, science and medicine, public service and business. A 1998 study found that even though only 3 percent of American college graduates were educated at a residential liberal arts college, alumni of these colleges accounted for:

●8 percent of Forbes magazine's listing of the nation's wealthiest CEOs in 1998
●8 percent of former Peace Corps volunteers
●19 percent of U.S. presidents
●23 percent of Pulitzer Prize winners in drama, 19 percent of the winners in history, 18 percent in poetry, 8 percent in biography, and 6 percent in fiction from 1960 to 1998
●9 percent of all Fulbright scholarship recipients and 24 percent of all Mellon fellowships in the humanities
●20 percent of Phi Beta Kappa inductions made between 1995 and 1997

On a per capita basis, liberal arts colleges produce nearly twice as many students who earn a Ph.D. in science as other institutions. Liberal arts graduates also are disproportionately represented in the leadership of the nation's scientific community. In a recent two-year period, nearly 20 percent of the scientists elected to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences received their undergraduate education at a liberal arts college.

It is no wonder someone considers liberal arts colleges as the envy and essence of American higher education. However, liberal arts education also faces challenges. For most Americans, the residential liberal arts colleges lack visibility. They have neither famous athletic programs nor large numbers of alumni. The media tend to ignore them。 As more and more young people tend to have a purely materialistic motivation for getting an education, there is increased need for career-directed education while the need for liberal arts education is on the decrease. A critic of liberal arts education even asked: "Can liberal arts colleges be saved or are they becoming like high end passenger trains that went out of business because no matter how well they performed, consumers had come to prefer traveling by plane and automobile?"

What is the point of liberal arts education? How do the liberal arts colleges respond to the globalization and decreased demand for liberal arts education? How do liberal arts colleges increase their visibility? Where will liberal arts colleges go in the future? With those questions in mind, Yong Tang, People's Daily Online Washington-based special correspondent, went to Salt Lake City and conducted a face-to-face and one-on-one interview with Dr. Michael S. Bassis, Westminster College President.

Westminster College, founded in 1875, is a private, comprehensive, independent liberal arts college dedicated to students and their learning. For the 12th consecutive year US News and World Report ranked Westminster College a top tier institution. The magazine ranks Westminster 20th in "Best Universities-Masters in the West." Westminster was also recognized as a great value, ranking 14th on the report's list of "Great Schools, Great Prices" in its category. The Princeton Review added Westminster College to its list of "The 361 Best Colleges" in America. The Princeton Review ranks also Westminster College as one of the nation's Best Values for undergraduate education. Kaplan/Newsweek recognized Westminster College in "America's Hottest Colleges" 2006 Edition, as one of the "most interesting schools" in America.

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