“Whenever I explain what ECLA is to friends back in the States, I usually end up making the claim: It is what a liberal arts college should be like."
– Cristina Groeger, ECLA Student 2008/09

In February 2011, the European College of Liberal Arts (ECLA) received state recognition as a private University from the Senatsverwaltung für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Forschung (Senate Administration for Education, Science and Research) in Berlin.

ECLA’s faculty has been recruited from the best research universities in the world, including the universities of Cambridge, Harvard, Heidelberg and Oxford. A faculty-student ratio of 1:7 makes it possible to offer a first-rate liberal education centered on small classes and weekly one-to-one tutorials. Students and faculty come from over 25 different countries and work together in English. They share the facilities of a small residential campus and the cultural riches of one of the most vibrant capitals in Europe.

ECLA offers a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Value Studies, as well as two one-year programmes and an international summer university. ECLA’s curriculum is focused on the exploration of moral, political, religious, and aesthetic questions, and designed with the understanding that such questions are naturally and profoundly connected. Faculty members trained in philosophy, literature, political theory, art history and film theory work closely together on these issues; the college does not divide academic expertise by department. Students spend half of their classroom time in co-taught 'core courses' devoted to fundamental questions about values, addressed through the close study of texts and works of art that have shaped, or seek to shape, the values we live by today. Against this background they choose their individual areas of concentration.

Philanthropic grants from the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation allow the college to have a need-blind admissions policy, and no qualified student is turned away for lack of funding.