Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts is the division of The New School university dedicated to solely educating traditional college-age undergraduates in their late teens and early twenties. All other university divisions offer graduate degrees. Although The New School began granting undergraduate degrees in 1944 to serve veterans, the origins of the contemporary Eugene Lang College date to the 1970s.

The program that was to become Lang College originated in 1972 as "Freshman Year at The New School" (no records in the collection date from this era). In this program, high school students enrolled in first-year undergraduate classes to explore different topics and disciplines, and were then expected to transfer as sophomores to another institution for degree completion.

The New School established a four-year, bachelor of arts granting Seminar College in 1975 or 1976. In 1978, the Freshman Year Program and the Seminar College were combined. First year students could then either continue their New School education in the Seminar College or transfer to another institution of higher education.

A substantial donation from philanthropist Eugene Lang precipitated the renaming of the Seminar College to Eugene Lang College in 1985. From 2005 until 2015, the college was renamed as, "Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts." In 2015, the college name changed to "Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts" following a university-wide rebranding.

References

Larrimore, Mark. "The New School's Long Road to a Four-Year College." In Realizing the New School: Lessons from the Past, edited by Julia Foulkes and Mark Larrimore, 80-89. New York: Public Seminar Books, 2020.

The New School for Social Research, 1981. "Self-Study Report: New School for Social Research and Parsons School of Design." https://digital.archives.newschool.edu/index.php/Detail/objects/NS010105_00000