Liberal arts education makes a comeback

There has been a spate of new universities in India championing the cause of liberal arts education. While most are in the private sector, they all share certain characteristics – they claim to provide a multidisciplinary approach, state-of-the-art infrastructure, international collaboration and student exchange, and freedom for academics to innovate.

Many academics see this as a resurgence of liberal arts education in a country that has long stressed medicine and engineering as the ultimate streams of study.

The challenge, experts feel, will be in getting qualified faculty for the fledging institutions and convincing Indian parents of the importance of a high quality liberal arts education.

New breed of institutions

Would Indians obsessed with engineering, medical and MBA degrees shell out Rs300,000 to Rs400,000 (US$4,830 to US$6,440) per year for a homegrown four-year undergraduate liberal arts degree?

The founders of the newly established Ashoka University, set to begin classes from this academic year, are convinced they will find many takers.

Funded by a group of highly successful entrepreneurs, Ashoka University will be spread over a 10-hectare campus offering residential facilities to all students. It is located in Rajiv Gandhi Education City in Kundli, in the National Capital Region.

The institution’s academic council boasts some of India’s finest intellectuals including Andre Beteille, professor emeritus at the Delhi School of Economics, Kaushik Basu, chief economist at the World Bank, notable writers-historians Ramachandra Guha, Christophe Jaffrelot and Sunil Khilnani, and Devesh Kapur, who heads the Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania in America.

The university promises a world-class teaching and campus environment and an innovative, multidisciplinary approach to liberal arts education modelled on some of the best universities in the world.

“There is definitely resurgence in the importance being given to a liberal arts education. Indian companies are realising that specialising in a narrow field is not helping students gain multiple outlooks, creative thinking and analytical skills,” Madhavi Menon, professor of English, told University World News.

Menon said starting Ashoka University from scratch had given the founders and faculty freedom to bring best practices into the system.

“If you look at existing universities which are trying out new curricula, there is a lot of resistance to change. But we are free to innovate and bring in best practices from around the world. What we are offering is an equivalent to an Ivy League degree at half the price.”

But Menon admitted that convincing parents to fund a liberal arts education would be the big challenge.

“It’s been easier to connect with students. But parents are still stuck in the MBA mindset and want children to pick one subject before entering college. They also don’t see the immediate value of shelling out Rs300,000 to Rs400,000 for an undergraduate arts degree,” Menon said.

Notably, leading public institutions in India are highly subsidized, with annual fees ranging between Rs5,000 and Rs30,000. In several state universities, fees are even lower.

Multidisciplinarity and research

Another focus for the new universities is multidisciplinarity and research.

Shiv Nadar University is envisioned as a research-led multidisciplinary institution that will cut across all schools to break disciplinary silos and broaden the learning process, said its vice-chancellor Nikhil Sinha.

“Everybody is talking about interdisciplinary education, but we find that hardly anybody is replicating it in their teaching and learning methods, because in most of the universities, their faculty is established and you can’t force them into this practice,” said Sinha.

“Bringing research into the undergraduate curriculum is another important focus for us, something that most universities in India do not have,” Sinha said.

The government-funded Ambedkar University, which was set up in 2007, caters exclusively for the humanities and social sciences. Vice-chancellor Shyam Menon feels the profile of the humanities has reached rock bottom and can only be raised.

“There has to be resurgence or a comeback for the humanities. We are not a small island like Singapore, where we can manage with only white-collar jobs. We need theatre people, poets, literature and culture,” said Menon.

The young university already has some interesting initiatives such as the Centre for Community Knowledge, the Centre for Early Childhood Education and Development and the School of Culture and Creative Expressions.

The programmes are also structured to enable continuous interaction between theory and practice, said Professor Venita Kaul, director of the Centre for Early Childhood Education and Development.

“The school of educational studies has five projects where students get to work with Delhi government schools. There are links with NGOs for development studies programmes. This is not just an internship where students go for a month. Faculty is also closely engaged with the field programmes and several of them are research projects.”

Government versus private institutions

While a majority of the new universities are privately funded and charge substantial fees compared to public institutions, experts believe that propagating liberal arts education is a good sign irrespective of funding and affiliation.

“There has been a considerable degree of investment of private as well as public money in medicine and engineering in India. In that context, some new ventures focusing on liberal arts are welcome,” said Supriya Chaudhuri, professor emeritus at Jadavpur University in Kolkata.

The biggest problem with Indian universities was the emphasis on classroom teaching and granting degrees, at the expense of research and publications, Chaudhuri argued.

“The separation between teaching and research, and the enormous number of students, have led to a decline in higher education. Although a few institutions are imparting quality education, research is often poorly funded with little time and infrastructure support.”

Thus private universities offering high quality infrastructure, research and collaboration opportunities, and freedom to faculty, were welcome and much needed, Chaudhuri said.

“Many of these new universities are offering a double major, an opportunity for students to explore different streams before narrowing down on choices. This is often not possible in some of the best universities of India.

“Secondly, owing to legal restrictions, state and central universities cannot hire faculty from abroad or take foreign students and so fail to provide an international experience that many of the new institutions are aspiring to,” Chaudhuri said.

While such innovations would go a long way towards providing holistic liberal arts education, recruiting qualified lecturers would be a big challenge, Venita Kaul stressed.

“The success of the new institutions will depend largely on the quality and number of faculty they are able to hire. Many of them have hired faculty from abroad but in the long run they will need a large pool of qualified manpower.”

Notably, many of the illustrious names that feature on the academic boards of private universities are graduates of Indian public universities.

“Many of the public elite colleges and universities today refuse to move out of their comfort zone. There is little space for experimenting or new pedagogy and curriculum. So their alumni who have also been exposed to international institutions would prefer a more liberal academic atmosphere,” Kaul said.

But she cautioned that equity should be a concern while recruiting students.

“Universities investing a lot on infrastructure and quality charge high fees, more than 10 times that of public universities, which are highly subsidised. But education should be value based. Unlike private medical and engineering colleges, these new initiatives should not be market driven because education is a public good,” Kaul said.