John Henry Newman’s The Idea of a University is an attempt to define a liberal arts education. Newman describes liberal education as all around useful knowledge, “In one case it is called Useful Knowledge, in the other Liberal” (1121). Another definition about higher learning liberal arts at a university is for someone to learn who he or she really is or really wants to be in life through a liberal education. That person is also responsible for forming some kind of lifestyle according to what he or she has grasped onto from the university way of living, “It neither confines its views to particular professions on the one hand, nor creates heroes or inspires genius on the other” (1126). Many people also
consider that a university is a place to receive a proof that he or she is qualified to work in a particular field of study as a professional. Newman believes this too when he says, “be a lawyer, or a pleader, or an orator, or a statesman, or a physician, or a good landlord, or a man of business, or a soldier, or an engineer, or a chemist, or a geologist, or an antiquarian,” (1125), but he believes they should also know about other things outside of their own profession.
I agree that each person should have the right to attend an educational institution seeking their own understanding of higher learning. There are some people that have the resources, whether it is wealth or academically, to access higher learning at a university, but fo
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