Liberal arts majors will become more valuable to companies moving forward
The Liberal Arts is not just Humanities. Professionals with education and skills in the former, including an understanding of social consciousness, adaptability, and creativity in life with a broad worldview, are the most sought-after traits by any work culture today.
Albert Einstein is said to have remarked, “The value of education in a liberal arts college is not the learning of many facts, but the training of the mind to think about something that cannot be learned from textbooks.”
Here, education in the liberal arts helps to widen one’s perspective within a particular academic area (or “major” in the U.S.) by providing additional lenses from outside of that discipline. The conventional borders between disciplines are dismantled by liberal arts education.
The term “liberal arts” is frequently misunderstood in India and other parts of the world. Even though the beginning of liberal arts education may be traced to the Ancient Greek traditions of learning in the 12th century, some Indian students confuse liberal arts with only the humanities and are unaware of what the degree comprises or how important it is for the country’s current and future generations. And here, the Indian Institutes of Technology’s engagement with inter-disciplinary research-based programmes in liberal arts to produce well-rounded engineers cannot be ignored.
Difference between Liberal Arts and Humanities
The liberal art encourages students to take courses in a wide variety of academic areas and it leads students to specialize in any area of their interest. The humanities, in turn, encompass the study of subjects like English, philosophy, religion, the fine arts, and foreign languages. Studying in the humanities is one component of a liberal arts education, as studies in the sciences, social sciences, and other areas.
The What and How of the Liberal Arts
Students who attend a liberal arts college receive an integrative, multifaceted education that goes beyond the constraints of professional degrees and equips them with critical thinking, interpersonal, creative, communication, ethical, and adaptable abilities.
Depending on their interests, students can also typically select more than one major or minor to specialize in across a wide range of areas. The majority of liberal arts colleges offer bachelor’s degrees in a variety of subject areas, including Media Studies, International Relations, Philosophy, Physics, English, Mathematics, Biology, Gender Studies, Film Studies, Political Science, Economics, Computer Science, and Business.
A liberal arts degree emphasises in-depth research, communication and writing skills, and hands-on learning to equip students for occupations that span the academic and practical worlds.
A liberal arts bachelor’s degree, a mainstay of the American educational system, is the first step for students who want to continue their education and pursue a master’s or doctorate because it gives undergraduate students a broad perspective that they can use later to specialise in their chosen field at the postgraduate or doctoral level.
Prospects of liberal arts students
The Indian National Education Policy (NEP), which was introduced in 2020 that intends to decompartmentalize and universalize Indian education, has increased the relevance of liberal arts education at present. The NEP mandates technical institutions to offer humanities and social science courses while requiring scientific and management courses to be included in the curricula of universities that primarily offer humanities courses. In totality, with the liberal arts ideology, the NEP seeks to give school and college students a “holistic” education by expanding the breadth and depth of their knowledge.
Education in the liberal arts requires students to simultaneously learn from other academic fields. This is the need of the hour in India. It’s unquestionable to link the social sciences, humanities, and sciences in the Indian education system. The future workforce must understand how to connect issues, such as health, technology, class, caste, gender, and aesthetics, with each other. The study of liberal arts aims to help solve some of those problems.
In 2022, as the Indian labour market diversifies and digitises, with new-age roles taking centre stage, employers will seek to hire individuals who are vivacious, socially conscious, adaptable, and creative with a broad worldview. A liberal arts degree is assured to open up new opportunities for students in India and create a new edtech wave in the country.
They can work as professionals across industries like healthcare, legal, design, public relations, media, linguistics, tourism, publishing, marketing & advertising, IT, E-commerce, performing arts, etc.
