Hey there, What a week it was. Hope you had a good one. This week Anupriya takes a look at liberal arts education, and follows it up with an in-depth analysis. Let's get into it!
Growing up, I had always dreamt of studying abroad in the U.S, but it was not something that was possible for me to do straight at the undergraduate level. Around then was when Ashoka University had just opened its doors to undergraduate students with a novel liberal arts structure. This caught my attention instantly and I was excited to go there. At university, I was surrounded by many other students like me, who too had the “American dream”, which they couldn’t entirely afford, and this was the “next best” alternative. As I justified this choice to friends and relatives, since the college was very new, I began to observe many debates and paradigms surrounding the liberal arts theme in India, and became more curious about deconstructing them.
Therefore, we’re going to explore other facets of liberal arts education in India in the form of a series through a few more pieces. Liberal arts education has seen a rise in India with more than 131 new private institutions coming up in the past four years, out of whom eight are prominent liberal arts institutions that were established in the past decade, securing funding to the tune of thousands of crores of rupees. From Krea University to Ashoka, Shiv Nadar, and Jindal, this massive investment in an alternative system of higher education may seem unprecedented to some but was intuitively predictable for many. From pop culture anecdotes and movies (like 3 idiots) against the rat race system, to the other end of the spectrum with data-rich reports from the world economic forum talking about the future of work, we witnessed a growing importance of the multidisciplinary education system.
Studies (Ernest T et al) conducted over a long period of time from the United States also confirmed this perspective as they demonstrated that students rank higher on a number of behavioral and developmental career outcomes following their graduation from liberal arts colleges.
This research by Seifert et al on liberal arts experiences particularly talks about how a greater degree of skill upgradation and holistic educational experience leads to better outcomes in moral reasoning, reflective judgment, leadership, the inclination for lifelong learning, intercultural effectiveness, as well as psychological well-being for students in the United States. Here, “liberal arts experiences” are defined as including influential student-faculty contact; a challenging classroom environment characterized by high expectations; faculty interest in teaching and students’ development; frequency of contact with faculty and student affairs professionals, and frequency of engagement in cooperative learning activities. As Indians slowly start taking to this trend, even choosing to attend elite, private liberal arts colleges over prestigious government universities in the country, such as Lady Shri Ram College or IIT Madras HSE, this change begs multiple questions.
Will this ever become a nation-wide trend? Can everyone afford it? Does the state plan to reflect on its own education policies to accommodate these increasingly multidisciplinary interests? Further, what do students want from this system of education? Are they looking for better jobs, more skills, the experience of wholesome, process-based education, rather than a conventional job that offers them security and continuity at the risk of monotony? In this short piece, we take you through some of these musings.
The Funding Mileu:
Although many private institutions have been given the institute of eminence award, like Manipal, O.P Jindal, and Shiv Nadar, they are still not eligible for the government CSR funding scheme. Therefore, they advocate for the need for CSR funding. When questioned about the potential incentive of return on their investment, philanthropists altruistically talk about not being able to put a price on disruptive cultural change and doing it purely for the joy of nurturing potential and modernizing these cultural shifts. The way that different funding is utilized is another area of exploration, as few universities declare their accounts and expenses publicly in a transparent manner. This longitudinal study (Ehrenberg et al.) focusing on altruistic donor funding in research universities and its allocation is one of the few on the topic. It mentions that wealthy liberal arts colleges abroad devote a larger share of their annual giving to further building their endowments, thereby increasing dispersion of wealth across private academic institutions, and not necessarily using the same for research.
Inclusivity and Eliteness:
In a case where students at liberal arts universities abroad experience more diversity than those in regular institutions (Umbach & Kuh), we see the opposite in India. With fees over 4 Lakhs a year at SNU, Ashoka, O.P Jindal, it is becoming clear that liberal arts education is not for everyone. Often hailing from an already elite private school to landing at these Universities, it is a common notion that only those from elite backgrounds come here. Few universities have quotas for caste reservation, a topic that is tip-toed around by young student activists. One thing that public Indian universities can proudly speak about is admitting people from all castes, classes, and regions of the country, which contributes to a rich learning environment. Whereas, students from the private Universities may only be restricted to metro cities, leading to homogeneity and a restricted out-of-the-classroom learning experience that can only happen through concerted efforts at interaction with a diverse set of people.
Diversity and inclusion measures have begun to take place and extra funding is being secured for getting gifted students from all walks of life, but how far that actually takes us towards the goal of inclusion is a difficult question that needs deeper questioning. After all, scholarships are an exception and not the norm. Only recently, Ashoka University announced that a new program would introduce 100 full scholarships. They also claimed that more than 50% of students are on some form of financial support in 2019, a milestone that is a first for any institution. In 2019, the government also announced a new private university bill, enforcing caste reservation in private institutions as well. As education is a subject in the jurisdiction of state legislations, the bill is yet to be adopted by some states, and we are yet to see any disruptive changes coming out of this initiative. We will explore the theme of reservation further in future pieces through this series on Liberal Arts education in India. Liberal arts universities being a more novel phenomenon in India, will take more time to absorb diversity efforts and make them a priority item in their organizational structures.
The Future of Liberal Arts in Higher Education- Public, Private and Perceptions
The New Education Policy 2020 placed a huge emphasis on liberal arts education, in ways that might have one argue that the method is going to become mainstream. However, the government spoke little about how it will implement the same, aside from mentioning “under-graduate education must be revamped through a four-year Liberal Arts Science Education degree". Recognizing the need for innovative and creative research, even IIIT and IIT’s are incorporating structures and schedules that allow for students to pick multiple subjects, alongside a major or multiple minors. A small but significant step, we may soon enter a time where liberal arts education is delineated from being disseminated solely by private institutions and becomes a norm across centrally sponsored institutions as well. Further, we have a burgeoning young population that needs to take up higher education. Hence, the demand and supply nexus of higher education in India will add up soon in the coming years, as more and more students are drawn to private institutions.
The reason could be more liberal rules, unachievable high cut-offs at central institutions or simply a desire for higher quality education while having the ability to afford it. This population is also the youngest working age population in the world, and therefore needs to be job ready, a theme that we will explore in another piece about how Liberal Arts Education aids employability, if at all, contrary to popular belief. Perceived as a predominantly western and elite form of education for the longest time, the adoption of liberal arts education in India is the result of globalization fused with innovative pedagogy. This phenomenon deserves to be studied further in a robust manner, with a specific focus on attitudes surrounding liberal arts education amongst Indians and across various castes and classes. Only then can we find more conclusive evidence surrounding its behavioural and cultural impact on the Indian labour market.
References:
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- https://www.iitbhilai.ac.in/index.php?pid=dept_liberal
- https://www.iiit.ac.in/files/media/Ramesh-TOI.png
