Courtesy of Thomas Aquinas College
CV NEWS FEED // Thomas Aquinas College in California, a Catholic school that only offers liberal arts majors, was ranked the #1 college with the most conservative students by the Princeton Review.
The Princeton Review ranked the liberal arts school, which has a campus in California and a campus in Massachusetts, above College of the Ozarks and Hillsdale College, which ranked in second and third place, respectively. The results are based on student rankings. Thomas Aquinas College was ranked #5 for most religious students, #5 for best student support, and #5 for happiest students.
Unlike Hillsdale College, Thomas Aquinas College, according to its website, does not offer majors in political science, nor does it have a master’s program. Instead, the college offers a four-year undergraduate major in the liberal arts. All of the students take the same classes, with “no majors, no minors, no electives, and no specializations,” their website states.
“The four-year interdisciplinary course of study makes use of the original writings of the great philosophers, historians, mathematicians, poets, scientists, and theologians of the West,” the website continues, exposing students to some of history’s most influential authors, including Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, Shakespeare, Descartes, Rousseau, Einstein, and Tolstoy.
The school uses the Socratic method and never uses textbooks. Students engage directly with primary documents. Instead of lecturing, professors, who are called “tutors,” lead classroom conversations in which students grapple with the text.
The school also does not study contemporary politics. Instead, students study political theory as part of the philosophy curriculum. Students read Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Politics, St. Thomas’s On Kingship, Machiavelli’s The Prince, Locke’s Second Treatise on Government, Rousseau, Spinoza, the founding documents of the United States, DeTocqueville, Adam Smith, and Marx.
Thomas Aquinas College is also deeply dedicated to the Catholic Faith, as the entire curriculum “is ordered toward theology — that is, the knowledge of God — and the College strives in all things to remain faithful to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.”
Many students attend daily Mass, which is offered at least twice a day, and the residential rules, like single-sex dorms and limited internet access, encourage students in their intellectual, moral, and spiritual formation.
The website states that the program objectives are both moral and intellectual. One of the moral goals is that a graduate has the “humility to acknowledge that he is measured by reality.” Another is that a graduate has “a love for the common good, which motivates and governs an appropriate participation in political and ecclesial communities.” Graduates will have “confidence that progress can be made on the difficult road to wisdom, especially under the light of the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church and in the company of friends pursuing wisdom.”
Intellectual goals include having “the skills to converse with others fruitfully and in the spirit of friendship, both in speech and in the written word.”
