Expert tips for diverse careers through liberal arts by Dr Sundar Ramaswamy, VC, Krea University

A large number of students choose science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) as their subjects for undergraduate studies. They think that their academic or career path becomes easy if they choose STEM studies. This is a misunderstanding. Their interests change over their three years of study. The credentials of people who've done well in life prove this.

The students’ interest may change during the four years of a Liberal Arts program. Some come in saying they want to study biology. They may have specialized in biology by the end of the third year, but they may actually add history, or whatever, as a minor because they develop a fascination with the set of courses developed by the professors.

The combination of career advising and the academic advising along with what the students’ plan of study should prepare them for any number of career pathways, maybe six to seven pathways.

So, one pathway could be, they may specialize and become an academic, which is a standard one. But there could be other very interesting pathways. A liberal arts university makes that a reality for the students. For instance, they may want to go and write the civil services exam and change the Indian government from within. A liberal arts student is very well positioned to do that. Or they may want to work for India Inc. or they want to go and work for the nonprofit sector or the social sector or become an entrepreneur. Any number of those pathways is possible.

This has been the experience of the liberal arts universities in the West. If the students take the right set of courses and get the right set of experiences, either as an internship or as a project and with the right mentoring and counseling these pathways become open to all these students.

Dr Sundar Ramaswamy, Vice Chancellor, Krea University describes how Liberal Arts programs mould your career by giving you experience in research, internships and external projects so that you can choose from seven or eight pathways for a successful career at the end of your undergraduate degree program.

Preparing students for life

Universities like Ashoka and Krea teach the students how to think, how to write, how to communicate, how to ask questions and how to be critical in terms of evaluating evidence. The students are taught how to look around corners, how to make sense of data versus noise versus signals. These are the skills that any employer wants.

Students also get to know how to relate to people. In a very diverse class they will come to know how to relate to people. Maybe it is one of the most challenging skills and competencies critical for any employee.

What a liberal arts university like Krea does is to prepare students for life. So, it happens that a student who does a liberal arts program will have six or seven jobs or six or seven careers or six or seven pathways. The liberal arts universities make students open to any number of pathways because creativity and the potential are there. So, the point is, the students don’t go for average professions. There’s no limit in terms of what they are being prepared for. The most important factor is students’ interests and that’s what the country needs.

In a liberal arts program, arts and sciences are interwoven

There are seven or eight key ideas in a discipline in the foundational courses during the first year of study. But students have to be exposed to different contexts again and again for them to become good at a particular discipline. For example, one can become a better economist if he or she can also study mathematics, philosophy, politics and even maybe physics. So, instead of studying all the subjects only in economics, they actually become better economists if they study papers that are also related to the discipline. The same thing can be said for a student of history or biology.

Similarly, teachers in those areas will have to be able to interact and advise students to do that. It is all about the idea of interweaving key concepts, whether it's a sense of history or whether it's doing research in a discipline. These threads get woven and again and again. It could be ethics, it could be data, or it could be a sense of history or a sense of research in a discipline.

In fact, you don't just see it once and drop it and go on to do something else. You sort of stitch all these together and bring it back in your second year, in your third year and then finally it all culminates.

Research at undergraduate level

The idea of undergraduate students doing research and being mentored by teachers is another one of those key interwoven principles. This brings a sort of a totality to the curriculum. It prepares the students for whether they do; whether they go on to do master’s or they choose some other walk of life. It's a grouping of threads that come together and creates a tapestry. That's really the way a career curriculum is envisioned.

Connect with the real world

The learning experience in a liberal arts program is such that the real world keeps coming into the academic world in multiple formats. The professors of practice bring their practitioner craft into the classroom. You also have students going out into the real world, either for internships or for projects which are required between the first year and the second year and between the second and the third year. This means they're constantly exploring different avenues like do I want to be a journalist, do I want to work in a nonprofit sector, or become actor or do I want to go and work in a bank and so on. So, there are different ways in which the real world constantly interacts with the academic world in a setting like Krea University.

Demystifying the idea of a career

The students don't quite feel that college is all about what they study in the classroom and then we will go and worry about the job later. Universities like Krea demystify the idea of a job or a career so that the idea of placement is not a stressful thing. It's something you start thinking about between your first and second year, between your second and third year.

These kinds of experiences -- projects, internships and externships, going abroad to do a project -- all of these build up the students’ portfolio. So, when they are ready to leave Krea, they not only have imbibed classroom learning, but also have all these experiences on or outside of campus. They may may look back and say we really don't want to go into the line of work or may actually look back and say that is the of line of work we really want to go into.

They will feel thankful that they got to do that in those three years because now they want to study that or do that for the rest of their lives. Those are considered more critical than what happens inside the classrooms.

The advice to Liberal Arts aspirants was given by Dr Sundar Ramaswamy, Vice Chancellor, Krea University in a webinar hosted by Careers360 recently.

If you have any doubt regarding any course or career, write to us at: ask@careers360.com

Select universities offering Liberal Arts programs

• Ashoka University

• Jindal School of Liberal Arts and Humanities

• Flame University

• Azim Premji University

• Symbiosis School of Liberal Arts

• Shiv Nadar University