A liberal arts degree is a bachelor's degree earned in certain liberal arts majors in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and fine arts. A liberal arts degree does not typically focus on a career-specific curriculum as many other college majors do, such as computer science, marketing, engineering, and nursing. Growing employer interest in skills-based hiring is spurring higher education institutions to build into the liberal arts curricula digital and other skills that can help graduates compete for a first job. Applied liberal arts refers to approaches to integrating skills content into liberal arts degrees. Approaches include: 1) offering an Interdisciplinary Bachelor of Arts degree, often known as Applied Liberal Arts (ALA); 2) offering a Bachelor of Science in Applied Liberal Studies as a way of combining the liberal arts foundation with more specialized areas of interest; and 3) integrating skills content (e.g., digital badges, microcredentials) into majors in the liberal arts. The aim of these approaches is to ensure solid grounding in the liberal arts coupled with courses pertinent to the workplace such as project management, data visualization and analysis, design thinking, conflict resolution, public speaking, leadership, dialogue and intercultural exploration, health and wellness, social innovation, personal finance, and entrepreneurship. Skills such as these can be embedded into humanities, math, science, fine arts, and social sciences disciplines – and when this occurs, these are often referred to as applied liberal arts.

Alternative terms: Applied Liberal Studies, Liberal & Applied Studies