As a general rule, small school is probably better than big school for liberal arts when it comes to engaging students in the way they should be engaged properly in the course of obtaining a liberal arts education. That’s based on the idea that a small school will have smaller classes and more discussion based classes, and more focus on ensuring any one student isn’t just ticking boxes to fulfill requirements at achieving a degree. Mileage will vary and 20 years ago UT did some reasonably good things to ensure that liberal arts students had to do some engaging liberal arts work in the course of completing their degree.
I like liberal arts, I think it is valuable and I have specifically leveraged my liberal arts education to have a (by most standards) successful career so far. 15-20 years out from getting my actual degree I suspect that there’s a bit more value having “Texas” on the bottom of the CV than say Southwestern. But also that line probably doesn’t mean all that much anyways.
Liberal arts is ultimately about critical thought, though, and it seems unlikely that you would see that practiced effectively at UATX.