New Liberal Arts degree

King’s is launching a brand new Bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts, allowing students to study across a range of areas including history, geography, politics, languages, music and religion.

Alongside institutions like Yale and Harvard, King’s is one of a select number of world-leading universities to provide students with new opportunities in the Liberal Arts, inviting outstanding students to study across a range of disciplines and make connections between them.

If students are not already bilingual they have the opportunity to study a new language. Students will also be able to study at one of our strategic partner universities abroad, and they will be able to participate in a summer school (at King’s or with one of our partners abroad) free of charge. In addition to providing Liberal Arts students with a global university experience, an internship module is available as part of the course.

The degree builds on the College’s long-standing tradition in the Arts - King’s was among the first institutions to create departments of English and German in the nineteenth century and more recently departments of War Studies and Digital Humanities. Famous King’s alumni include some of Victorian England’s foremost intellectuals like John Keats and John Ruskin. More recently, alumni such as Nobel Prize winners Desmond Tutu and Mario Vargas Llosa have combined their grounding in the Arts with passionate engagement for justice and human rights.

A general Arts curriculum has been rooted in the tradition of European universities since medieval times. During the nineteenth century King’s taught a ‘BA General Degree’. The growing professionalisation of disciplinary study during the twentieth century ushered in a trend towards specialisation through single or joint honours degrees.

The new Liberal Arts degree responds to the demands of students who have demonstrated excellence across a number of subjects, and who wish to continue pursuing these subjects at university level. It also gives students the opportunity to try out new subjects before specialising in a major and a minor subject.

Professor Jan Palmowski, Head of the School of Arts and Humanities, said: ‘We’re delighted to be adding Liberal Arts to the wide range of programmes offered by the College. The degree will educate future leaders for any profession or vocation, helping them to become global citizens through their ability to create knowledge, their international outlook, and their sense of community and engagement.’

The programme is also offering five scholarships of £15,000 each that will be available to students each year. The Liberal Arts BA will be available from 2012 as a three-year undergraduate course.

For more details on the BA Liberal Arts, see the online prospectus and the course page in the School of Arts and Humanities.