Liberal arts universities are taking a ‘problem-centric approach’ to education

NEW DELHI: In Symbiosis School of Liberal Arts (SSLA), Pune, there are students who have taken up anthropology as a major along with physics as a minor and media as double minor. In OP Jindal University, there are students who study international relations with environmental psychology. In Ahmedabad University, psychology students are doing minors in marketing and business communication. This flexibility and a wide range of options are key features of liberal arts universities, allowing students to study unique combinations of subjects, according to their interests.

“Our past students have designed majors such as art history and literature, international relations and environmental psychology, psychology and expressive arts, international business and literature. In addition, students can also choose from over 430 elective courses offered by our 12 schools. So, the distinctiveness is that you can curate your own curriculum keeping in mind your interests, inclinations that are true to your passion,” said C Rajkumar, vice chancellor of OP Jindal University.

Many universities even offer the option to students to design their own degrees, based on the subjects they choose. That said, students emerging from India’s highly structured school system often end up confused by the choices.

Some teachers said that most students initially detest learning other subjects that are not from their discipline. Creating a curriculum for a varied course is challenging as there are students from multiple streams who might not have the necessary background for the topic they have opted for.

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Foundation programmes in liberal arts

Liberal arts universities, modelled on institutions abroad, mainly the US, believe that having a problem-centric approach is the way to move forward in education. That is, instead of differentiating subjects by discipline, they choose to view the problem from a practical perspective using teachings from different disciplines and emphasising on creating diverse groups consisting of different disciplines for
problem solving.

In most of these universities, the first year is dedicated to “unlearning” through various foundation courses that focus on real-world problems, blending subjects of different disciplines. For instance, Ahmedabad University has a foundation programme on human behaviour which looks at the topic through the interdisciplinary lens of psychology and other social sciences.

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“[The choices are] entirely dependent on students’ interests and passion. Class 12 marks and first-year marks don’t matter because for us in the first year, it is an unlearning process, it helps students ask questions, learn in groups and collaborate rather than compete,” said Shweta Sinha Deshpande, director and associate professor at Symbiosis School of Liberal Arts (SSLA), Pune.

The first year also exposes students to as many subjects from other disciplines as possible. The universities say that they ensure that students are divided into diverse groups of different backgrounds for projects that look at real-world problems rather than subject-specific problems.

“We believe that if students are over-specialised in a subject in your undergraduate [studies] and have exposure to only one way of thinking, that is not very healthy. We try to give a broad base in undergraduation. For instance, a bachelor’s student in data sciences will take part in a debate along with a student in philosophy and a student in economics,” said Ravi Chakraborty, director of communication for liberal arts, Alliance University.

Liberal Arts Schools: Undeclared majors

Since students come from a school system where the subjects are divided into streams such as commerce, science and humanities, teachers said that there is a certain degree of confusion among students when provided with all different subject options. To help students ease into the interdisciplinary format of learning, universities allow students to continue studying well into their degree, without having to pick their major discipline, until the third year.

“Most of the students come in confused. Hence, a lot of our students join Ahmedabad University as undeclared majors. They want to study many different courses, dip into different disciplines and then decide what they actually want to major in. Our programme is such that they are able to experiment. In the second and third years they choose courses from different disciplines. We also offer many interdisciplinary courses. That’s when they sort of venture out,” said Saptam Patel, professor of communications at Ahmedabad University.

“They can declare their major at any point of time. Usually the programme is designed in a manner that they finish their degree in the eighth semester. We have students who have realised midway that they wanted to do a dual major or they wanted a different major. They change, they take a bit more time and that’s absolutely okay,” said Patel.

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Liberal Arts Education: Challenges

Many students are initially a bit unwilling to study subjects that are not from their discipline.

“It is very challenging. We still need to work at the school level. For the majority of the students it takes a bit of time for interdisciplinary learning, working with people, and studying disciplines they are not familiar with, and thinking from that perspective. It takes them time to realise how it shapes their
thinking into something more modern. In the first year, there is a lot of ‘why am I studying this’ from the students. By the time they reach third year, they realise the importance of their entire learning,” said Patel.

There are also instances when students want to study a certain subject but they do not have the requisite
skills or background knowledge to opt for the courses.

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“There are some engineering students who have shifted to study liberal arts and humanities at our university. These students really don’t have much background in these subjects because even at the school level, they would have been science students,” said Santosh Singh, dean of School of Liberal Arts, DR BR Ambedkar University, Delhi.

Universities have tried to address this by creating prerequisites for certain subjects.

If a student doesn’t have the necessary context or skill for a certain subject, the university asks them to take up courses that first build their understanding. So, if a student from a science background has to take up history, they might have to take up some foundational papers in history before opting for the minor.

“If somebody from Arts wants to do engineering, or someone from history wants to do data analytics, the students are required to do some courses at Ahmedabad University. And when the student does those courses, they are able to take that minor. If you want to take mathematics or programming, you have to prepare yourself to get a minor in that discipline. A minor is not offered just like that. Similarly, if an engineering student wants to take a minor in social and political science, they might also have to learn certain concepts in detail. That is the kind of platform we give students,” said Patel.