Creating Your First Liberal Arts College in Cities: Skylines

The Liberal Arts College is one of three custom campus areas you can create with the Cities: Skylines Campus expansion. (The other two are the Trade School and University campuses.)

You can build a Liberal Arts College once you’ve unlocked the Big City population milestone, which depending on the map, can happen anywhere from 4,000 to 17,000 citizens.

This guide will take you through the basics of getting your liberal arts college up and running, which involves:

Creating a liberal arts college campus area
The different liberal arts college buildings
Increasing your campus reputation

Creating a Liberal Arts College Campus Area

Start your campus area by placing a Liberal Arts Administration Building. You’ll find it by opening the education build menu, and clicking on the Liberal Arts College Campus Area tab.

Placing the Liberal Arts Administration Building starts your liberal arts campus area.

Placing this building will automatically start your campus area. Expand it by going to Districts and Areas, and using the Paint Campus Area tool.

You can also start out by painting your desired campus area, and then building the Administration Building within it.

Use the Paint Campus Area tool to expand your liberal arts campus area.

The Administration Building by itself has no student capacity, so it’s time to start placing your other campus buildings!

Liberal Arts College Buildings

The Liberal Arts College Campus comes with three different building types that you can build along with your administration building.

These other buildings do not require road access (only the admin building does), and only need to be connected to the admin building by pedestrian paths. Of course, you can still build them along roads if you like.

Education Buildings

These increase student capacity, and some have specific bonuses. You can have multiple of these buildings on your campus.

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Building	Level Unlocked	Cost (₡)	Student Capacity	Notes
Liberal Arts Dormitory	Unrecognized	13,000	300
Liberal Arts Study Hall	Unrecognized	16,500	400
Liberal Arts Gymnasium	Recognized	26,500	300	City-wide effect on citizen health.
Liberal Arts Auditorium	Acclaimed	26,500	600
Liberal Arts Laboratories	Acclaimed	40,000	350	Boosts Academic Works creation

Faculties

These three unique buildings increase student capacity by 1,000 each. They also offer unique bonuses to your city that correspond to the fields of study being taught.

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Building	Level Unlocked	Cost	Student Capacity	Notes
School of Education	Unrecognized	100,000	1,000	Increases school efficiency
School of Environmental Studies	Renowned	112,000	1,000	Decreases city-wide garbage accumulation
School of Economics	Prestigious	126,000	1,000	Increases office zone revenue

The School of Environmental Studies building, which decreases garbage accumulation in your city.

Supplementary Buildings

These are miscellaneous buildings that make your campus more interesting. Some increase student capacity by a small amount, and many increase land value.

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Building	Level Unlocked	Cost	Student Capacity	Notes
Liberal Arts Groundskeeping	Unrecognized	6,500	0	Increases land value
Drama Club	Unrecognized	16,000	50
Liberal Arts Outdoor Study	Recognized	10,000	200
Liberal Arts Cafeteria	Recognized	16,000	0	Increases land value
Liberal Arts Fountain	Recognized	13,000	0	Increases land value
Liberal Arts Library	Renowned	26,500	100	Increases land value
Art Club	Renowned	20,000	50
Liberal Arts Commencement Office	Renowned	33,000	0	Has a graduation ceremony animation
Liberal Arts Academic Statue 1	Renowned	16,500	0	Increases land value
Liberal Arts Bookstore	Acclaimed	16,000	0	Increases land value Increases Tourism attractiveness
Liberal Arts Media Lab	Prestigious	46,500	200	Boosts Academic Works creation.
Dance Club	Prestigious	26,500	50
Liberal Arts Academic Statue 2	Prestigious	20,000	0	Increases land value

The Liberal Arts Study Hall (education building) with the Outdoor Study (supplementary building) in front of it.

Increasing Your Liberal Arts College Campus Reputation

You’ll need to raise the reputation of (i.e., level up) your liberal arts college campus in order to unlock most of the buildings for it. The five reputation levels are:

Level 1 – Unrecognized
Level 2 – Recognized
Level 3 – Renowned
Level 4 – Acclaimed
Level 5 – Prestigious

Moving up a level requires you to hit three types of targets:

#1: Students enrolled. This will basically require having a large enough population, and enough of that population having gone to elementary and high school. You’ll also need sufficient student capacity in your campus.

#2: Campus attractiveness. All of the campus buildings, as well as varsity sports, increase attractiveness. Reaching the required target per level may sometimes mean building multiple instances of buildings (e.g., several dormitories).

#3: Academic works. Your campus area has a base chance of producing one academic work per year. You can boost this chance further by hiring academic staff or building a Liberal Arts Laboratories and a Liberal Arts Media Lab.

You can also spend 50,000 once per academic year on a research grant, which will produce 1 additional academic work. You can choose between the fields of literature, cinematography, and music as the field to provide a research grant for.

Note: Reputation increases are granted at the end of each academic year (which runs on a 40-week cycle), not necessarily as soon as you hit all three targets.

Click the name of your campus area on the map to bring up this info panel and see your progress towards the next reputation level.

Click on the Academic Works tab to hire academic staff or fund research, in order to produce more academic works.

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Liz Villegas

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Liz is a writer and photographer with a love for building and strategy games. Her spare time is often split between lifting, reading, drawing, annoying her dog Mr. Porky Butt, and squinting at stat tables on the wiki pages of whatever game she's currently playing.

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