In his 2009 article, Tom Wood states that “liberal arts education has been under attack recently in the U.S. as meaningless and irrelevant, but it is gaining a foothold in other countries.” Wood highlights Europe, Japan, and Middle Eastern countries as examples. Other scholars have discussed how Liberal Arts education has taken root and intermixed with local traditions and values in different parts of the world (e.g., Mou, 2021).

Well over a decade after Wood’s article, LAS education is thriving in many parts of the world, with Europe being a prime example. As noted in Van der Wende (2011), there exists in Europe a “quest for broader bachelor programmes in order to overcome the disadvantages of too early and over-specialization at the undergraduate level” (p. 242). Liberal Arts & Sciences programs are well-suited to redress this issue by emphasizing the development of transversal skills, work across academic disciplines, and problem-based learning.