The Bachelor of General Studies degree program offers students a flexible, innovative path to degree completion. Graduates of the degree program will be informed and effective members of society who are well prepared for a changing marketplace with its diverse cultures. The theme of the degree offered by the School of Letters and Sciences on the ASU Downtown Phoenix campus, Society and the Individual, will explore the tensions between individualism and collectivism, the public and private self, and interplay of culture and identity.

Through the general education and major courses, the graduates of the degree program will:

• Engage critical thinking in professional, personal, and public contexts. The graduates will be able to conceptualize, analyze, and synthesize complex problems; evaluate evidence; apply principles of logic to social issues; discuss moral implications from multiple perspectives; and understand applications of certainty in varying degrees.
• Develop the capacity for sustainable information literacy. The graduates will understand the progression of experience becoming data, which becomes information transformed into knowledge, navigate emerging technologies, and develop lifelong skills for effective interpretation of “new” or unexpected information.
• Communicate effectively verbally, as well as in writing. The graduates will be able to compose language-based messages that achieve desired outcomes, apply principles of reasoning and ethics as a routine practice, decipher ambiguous oral and written messages, and understand the role of culture in communication.