scholarly journals Building a Liberal Arts Tradition in India

Author(s):  
Takako Mino

Postcolonial nations often struggle with the legacy of higher education systems built by and for the benefit of former colonizers. In India, several visionaries have endeavored to design new approaches to higher education that are suitable to India’s unique context while taking inspiration from the US liberal arts college model. Interest in the liberal arts has grown - in an interconnected world, where a broader scope of understanding is required to craft solutions to societal challenges, young Indians are seeking an alternative to the specialized university model that has dominated the Indian higher education landscape since colonial times. This paper explores the practice of the liberal arts in India through three questions: How does the liberal arts approach fit within the Indian context? How have Indian universities built their own liberal arts tradition? What tensions do these universities navigate? I collected data through a document analysis and interviews with founders, faculty, students, and alumni at three new liberal arts universities in India. While communicating the practical value of the liberal arts to a largely unfamiliar population, the universities built their own liberal arts tradition to help students appreciate, analyze, and develop a commitment to improving the Indian context. At the same time, universities faced numerous tensions: responding to pressures to produce highly employable graduates while remaining true to their institutional ideals, balancing wisdom from both the western liberal arts model and indigenous Indian traditions, and fostering greater inclusion while maintaining financial sustainability. The study’s findings contribute to the field of higher education in India and other postcolonial countries seeking to create new culturally relevant education traditions.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kylie Quave ◽  
Shannon Fie ◽  
AmySue Qing Qing Greiff ◽  
Drew Alis Agnew

Teaching introductory archaeology courses in US higher education typically falls short in two important ways: the courses do not represent the full picture of who contributes to reconstructing the past and do not portray the contemporary and future relevance of the archaeological past. In this paper, we use anti-colonial and decolonial theories to explain the urgency of revising the introductory archaeology curriculum for promoting equity in the discipline and beyond. We detail the pedagogical theories we employed in revising an introductory archaeology course at a small liberal arts college in the US and the specific changes we made to course structure, content, and teaching strategies. To examine the impacts on enrolled students and on who chose to enroll in the revised archaeology curriculum, we analyze student reflection essays and enrollment demographics. We find that students developed more complex understandings of the benefits and harms of archaeological knowledge production and could articulate how to address archaeology’s inequities. We also found that enrollment in archaeology courses at the college shifted to include greater proportions of students of color. These results support the notion that introductory archaeology courses should be substantially and continually revised.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
William D. Schneper

Purpose Liberal arts colleges (LACs) have played a crucial role in the foundation and development of the US higher education system. Today, these schools face numerous organizational and environmental challenges that threaten their performance and even survival. This paper aims to examine whether Senge’s (1990) vision of the learning organization can serve a useful function in responding to these challenges. Design/methodology/approach A conceptual analysis was conducted based on research relating to learning organizations, LACs and the liberal arts tradition. Findings The paper identifies significant congruence between learning organization and liberal arts/liberal learning principles. LACs may benefit from applying and modifying Senge’s (1990) framework to their own unique situations. Originality/value While The Fifth Discipline has certainly contributed to the lexicon of higher education, the role that Senge’s (1990) framework plays in LACs has received scant research attention. This paper investigates the applicability of Senge’s approach to an underexplored context.


2021 ◽  
pp. 006996672110638
Author(s):  
Jai Mohan Pandit ◽  
Bino Paul

This study investigates human resource management (HRM) practices in higher education institutions (HEIs) based on a comparative analysis of India and the US. Although higher education in India has grown over the decades, its quality, in general, has not kept up with global standards. On the other hand, many US universities have performed consistently well in international university rankings. Based on qualitative research collected from principal stakeholders of HEIs in India and the US, HRM practices and policies followed by them are presented and discussed. Data collection for the research study was through web interviews during the period August–October 2020. The study reveals that Indian public HEIs do not have professional HRM teams. Also, they are in a formative stage in autonomous and private institutions. On the other hand, many HEIs in the US have developed mature HRM systems. This difference resonates in attributes such as structure of HRM, recruitment and selection processes, training and development programmes, performance management, career progression and talent retention.


2015 ◽  
pp. 23-24
Author(s):  
Veena Bhalla ◽  
Krishnapratap B. Powar

In the new millennium the Indian higher education system has grown two and half times in terms of both the number of universities and the number of students. In comparison the growth in international students has been anaemic. The international students are largely from Asia and Africa. In 2012-13 40% of the students were female; 80% were studying at the under-graduate level, 18% at post-graduate level and 2% were in research. The liberal arts accounted for 30% and 70% were in professional streams, the maximum number being in medicine & health care (35%) followed by engineering & technology (23%) and management (9%).


Author(s):  
Anuja Roy ◽  
Jacqueline Kareem

Indian higher education has never received much prominence when compared to the primary level. Academicians of our country have already pointed out that for economic and social well-being of our country majorly depends on the quality and widespread of higher education in our country. The main obstruction is the misconceptions by the general public of our country which is accompanied by the economic issues. The vision of Ministry of Human Resource and Development heads the department of Higher Education whose aim is to realize India’s human resource potential to its fullest in the education sector, with equity and excellence. Higher education is a costly affair when we take into consideration the fact that almost 20% of the population still lie under the poverty line. There is still a gap in the level of enrolment between males and females. The government is trying hard to overcome this disparity. Skills have often been ignored in our country’s scenario. Thus, higher education should also promote and encourage technical education. An All India Survey on Higher Education was initiated only in 2011, only because none of the sources had a complete picture of the data on higher education. The large amount of population is also a problem as it becomes difficult to cater to the needs of each individual or group. The resources are scarce when compared to the people demanding for it. We should try to identify the problems, and then we should work towards solving those problems. Public of our country should be willing to send their children for higher education; they should be having a positive attitude towards higher education. This paper discusses several steps that can be untaken to bridge the gaps in the system of higher education in India.


2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 551-568
Author(s):  
Richard Wells

In the US, the value of liberal arts is in question as neo-liberal reformers push for a more instrumentalist form of higher education. Older traditions of worker education, however, along with more recent university-based labour studies programs, offer a compelling counter-narrative concerning the social and political purpose of higher education. Taking its cue from C.W. Mills’ notion of the sociological imagination, labour studies has the potential not only to re-energize the transformational mission of popular worker education, but reclaim the idea of higher education as a public good.


Author(s):  
John W. Fadden

This essay looks at the place of biblical studies as a secular field of the humanities in an undergraduate liberal arts college in the neoliberal age. First, the article reviews the idea of neoliberalism as a governing rationality. Next, the article assesses how neoliberalism transforms the notion of higher education and the humanities, reducing it to economic terms for administrators, faculty, and students. The article also attends to neoliberalism’s effect on gendered experiences in higher education. Under this rationality, few justifications are available for biblical studies beyond economic reasons. Lastly, the article places (feminist) biblical studies in conversation with other fields challenging neoliberal rationality for justifying the continued existence of the humanities. It examine what (feminist) biblical studies may contribute to an intersectional humanities project for the liberal arts college as an alternative to the neoliberal vision of higher education.


2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-112
Author(s):  
Joyce Lu

Battle Battle: Engaging Diversity in the American Liberal Arts College examines the production of an Asian American hip-hop musical, directed by the author, at a private liberal arts college in the US. This article demonstrates how the production process was determined by the complex history of racial formation and relations in America. Those who were extremely attached to standardized Eurocentric practices of control in education could only read this complexity as disorder and found the process to be out of control or anarchic. The author claims, however, that the process was necessarily anarchic insofar as the production was undertaken as a decolonizing project; an attempt to undermine structures of domination and employ an ethical and democratic way of working that directly conflicted with the violent constraints of White hegemony that are present in elite educational institutions.


Author(s):  
Nikhila Deep Bhagwat ◽  
Hemant Rajguru

This chapter gives an overview of Indian Higher Education system with special reference to Open and Distance Learning. It enlists the merits and limitations of Open and Distance Learning system. It also focuses on complexities and weaknesses of Indian Higher Education comparing it with the educational policies in other Asian Countries. The chapter describes the limitations of Higher Education System in India and discusses the reforms and restructuring announced by the ministry of education in India. It further unfolds the success story of Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University's ‘School of Agricultural Sciences' by explaining in detail the innovative practices in Agricultural ODL.


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