Gokulananda Nandan

Column
Three reasons why India should embrace a liberal arts
education system
Several individuals, both in US and India, succumb to mid-life career
crisis. However, its Indian context invokes a fairly unique reason to it:
dissatisfaction with their major in college.
An enticing article on career counseling stated that changing career at
the age of 30 or 35 in India makes sense because a handful number of
people are forced into majoring in a subject they never want. Then,
graduation, a job on that field, work for some time they get after
graduation and become dispirited and despondent after working for
certain years.
As an Indian I can say this is an absolute spot-on statement. All this
herky-jerky happens because of Indias unilateral education system
that compels students to decide their major even before to get to the
high school.
A note for those who are alien to this education pattern: In Indian the
high school curriculum system the students need to opt for humanities
or science stream before enrollment. So, they are not allowed to take
classes of, for example, physics and philosophy or chemistry and music
simultaneously. And in the college they need to do so before
enrollment too. So, the students at the age of seventeen or eighteen
they are forced to decide, as said in the above-mentioned article,
which stream or major they would specialize in during their high school
and college and continue to bear-hug them for the rest of the life.
Be a teenager, but think like an adult.
As a result, by the time the students discover their best area of
interest, they find them already having chosen respective field of
study. Then it turns into a test of adaptability. Whoever can respond to
what they major in with unswerving vigor continues to work on the
same field throughout the career. And others encounter with a mid-life
career crisis.
To evade this crisis and to provide the students better opportunity
Indian education system needs a complete makeover. To do so we
need to embrace liberal arts education system of U.S., which facilitates
students to study different subjects before they decide their major. It
also theoretically augments students marketability.

Here are the three reasons why I think so.

First, liberal arts system turns out to be an application to one of the
major career development theories: Happenstance Learning Theory. In
a nutshell, this theory hypothesizes that human behavior is the
product of countless numbers of learning experiences made available
by both planned and unplanned situations in which individuals find
themselves. The learning outcomes include skills, interests, knowledge,
beliefs, preferences, sensitivities, emotions, and future actions.
Learning to tackle challenges is the best way students can garner
different skills, knowledge and interests. And this process becomes
easy when they take classes of different subjects and apply their
knowledge in resolving practical problems. Classes are miniature
representations of different problems and solutions that characterize
this world. So, in order to be adept at handling all types of situations,
one has to study as many subjects as possible at college level, which is
only provided in liberal arts curriculum program. Hence in India we
need to adopt this to make education system more viable and
productive.
Second, liberal arts program not only offers students to study a diverse
group of subject like: Physics, Music, Literature, Philosophy at the same
time, but also fosters social integration skill by encouraging them to
get engaged in different subject related educational societies in the
campus. A unilateral curriculum system like Indias limits all these
opportunities to be explored as the students get exposed to only one
subject over the course of entire undergraduate program.
In fact, Alexander Astins Involvement theory of 1984 and Vincent
Tintos Retention theory of 1987 corroborates this practice of social
integration and campus involvement. Combining these two theories
what comes out is introducing students to campus resources,
encouraging involvement in club and organizations, promoting learning
through service opportunities, etc. can prompt students to become
engaged in their experience, thus enhancing their learning and
development.
Third, due to experiencing abovementioned two aspects of liberal arts
system, the students improve their interpersonal and communication
skills, which are instrumental to get a good break-through after
graduation.
The Indian students lack communication skill due to their meager
engagement in campus related volunteer service. Most of the students

come to attend classes and then they go home. In India, voluntary

service is not contemplated as something important. In 2012 it was
revealed that 39 percent of campus recruiters didnt wish to hire
students because their lack of communication skill.
Implementing liberal arts education system in India is important to
provide the students enough opportunity to develop their proper area
of interest and to help them enhance their marketability by improving
communication skill, and practicing the culture of social integration
and campus involvement.

Words: 801
Clips: Photo of Delhi University, one of the pioneer universities of India
right in the heart of the capital, Delhi. Link:
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/06/05/article-21546661372E5A2000005DC-78_964x613.jpg
Audience: Written to be published on opinion page of International
Herald Tribune for both Indian-origin people in the US and Indians in
India.