Maybe my experience wasn't typical, but my liberal arts classes in college were a joke. They were crowded, hurried, narrowly focused, and taught by professors that didn't seem to have the time or the inclination to provoke the students into new ways of thinking at all.

I suppose it's different at schools that can afford to staff these classes at 1:15 student teacher ratios with good teachers but the money that was spent on making me a "well rounded" student would have gone a lot further if I'd just been given a pile of books to read and some time at a quiet desk.