liberal arts 
plural noun
1chiefly North American Arts subjects such as literature and history, as distinct from science and technology.Through the establishment of courses in humanities, management and economics, we expect to permeate liberal arts into the sciences....
- Students also will study mathematics, science, liberal arts and the humanities as part of the curriculum.
- If he had been a man of the left, he would be teaching that subject at some small liberal arts college for $70,000 a year.
2 historical The medieval trivium and quadrivium.These objects represent the seven liberal arts that provided the basis of a Renaissance education.
Origin
Liberal, as distinct from servile or mechanical (i.e. involving manual labour) and originally referring to arts and sciences considered ‘worthy of a free man’; later the word related to general intellectual development rather than vocational training.