Skip to content

Goals of a Liberal Arts Education

phone: 919-684-6217 | email: advising@duke.edu | advising.duke.edu

Sophomore Kaeden Hill and Katie Lam catch up in the Chapel arcade during a Fall afternoon.

The beauty of Duke’s liberal arts education is that you gain skills and ways of thinking you can take anywhere you want to go. You will develop the skills needed to work in teams and thrive, to think critically and explore different perspectives, to write persuasively, to analyze with precision and to develop higher-order reasoning and independent thought. 

It’s a big transition from high school to college, so our first-year programs are designed to help you succeed at Duke. In addition to living together on East Campus, you will join other first-year students for a writing and a seminar course to build critical thinking and communications skills needed throughout your studies. You can also take part in FOCUS, the first-year program that consists of seminars built around themes. 

Duke students are creative thinkers determined to make a difference in the world. We make the most of that potential by offering extraordinary flexibility in our curriculum. We also value an interdisciplinary focus, because the blurring/crossing/mixing of traditional academic boundaries often leads to great insight and discovery. 

Nearly half of our students study abroad. We’ve made it possible to study abroad regardless of your major. We also ask you to study a language, because there is no better way to take yourself outside of your own culture and comfort zone than to think in another language. In today’s deeply interconnected world, such global experiences and perspectives will serve you well.