Columbia College Chicago is an independent, non-profit liberal arts college specializing in arts and media disciplines, with more than 8,000 students pursuing degrees in more than 100 undergraduate and 15 graduate degree programs.

Founded in 1890, the school is located in the South Loop district of Chicago, Illinois.

It is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission.

The liberal arts (Latin: artes liberales) are those subjects or skills that in classical antiquity were considered essential for a free person (Latin: liberalis, "worthy of a free person") to know in order to take an active part in civic life, something that (for Ancient Greece) included participating in public debate, defending oneself in court, serving on juries, and most importantly, military service.

Grammar, logic, and rhetoric were the core liberal arts, while arithmetic, geometry, the theory of music, and astronomy also played a (somewhat lesser) part in education.

Undergraduate education is the post-secondary education previous to the postgraduate education.

It includes all the academic programs up to the level of a bachelor's degree.

For example, in the United States an entry level university student is known as an undergraduate, while students of higher degrees are known as graduates.

In some other educational systems and subjects, undergraduate education is post-secondary education up to the level of a master's degree; this is the case for some science courses in Britain and some medicine courses in Europe.

Postgraduate education, or graduate education in North America, involves learning and studying for academic or professional degrees, academic or professional certificates, academic or professional diplomas, or other qualifications for which a first or bachelor's degree generally is required, and it is normally considered to be part of higher education.

In North America, this level is generally referred to as graduate school (or sometimes colloquially as grad school).

In education, a curriculum (plural: curricula or curriculums) is broadly defined as the totality of student experiences that occur in the educational process.

The term often refers specifically to a planned sequence of instruction, or to a view of the student's experiences in terms of the educator's or school's instructional goals.

In a 2003 study Reys, Reys, Lapan, Holliday and Wasman refer to curriculum as a set of learning goals articulated across grades that outline the intended mathematics content and process goals at particular points in time throughout the K–12 school program.

Curriculum may incorporate the planned interaction of pupils with instructional content, materials, resources, and processes for evaluating the attainment of educational objectives.

Curriculum is split into several categories, the explicit, the implicit (including the hidden), the excluded and the extra-curricular.