Expert tips on Liberal Arts programs by Prof. Malabika Sarkar, Vice-Chancellor, Ashoka University

A lot of students and parents have a misconception that Liberal Arts courses deal only with fine arts courses like music, dance or painting. They also tend to believe that science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) courses are not part of Liberal Arts programs that follow 3+1 year of education. Some students are also not sure whether they will get placements after doing Liberal Arts courses. Contrary to such mistaken notions, a number of good universities in India, including Ashoka University, O.P Jindal Global University, Krea University, Flame University, Shiv Nadar University, Symbiosis School of Liberal Arts and Azim Premji University offer BA and BSc courses in Liberal Arts programs.

The interests of students keep changing and so Liberal Arts programs allow you to explore the curriculum before you decide the subject or interest area that you are really good at. Liberal Arts programs give you the flexibility to specialize in one subject for the major while also allowing you to have a double major. This essential means you can have multiple ways to express your strengths and interests, study various subjects in the first three years and then come back and specialise in your area of interest in the fourth year.

Prof. Malabika Sarkar, Vice Chancellor of Ashoka University, clears your doubts on Liberal Arts programs and also advises you to choose these programs that promise great career prospects.

Clear your misconceptions

First of all, it's a misunderstanding that liberal arts have nothing to do with sciences. The Polish astronomer Copernicus spoke about mathematics and astronomy as liberal arts in his great scientific work, The Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres. So, as far as back as 1543, people were conscious about this and liberal arts always included the sciences.

Historically, if you look at the great institutions of liberal arts across the world they always had sciences embedded in their programs. It's just because of a misunderstanding that we now keep on saying liberal arts and sciences. The term liberal arts encompass the basic sciences, that is, the mathematical sciences and the natural sciences. Unless these are enmeshed with the humanities and the social sciences you do not get a holistic university. So, for that holistic experience you have to have all of this in place. You need to have economics, social sciences, humanities and all of the sciences.

Sciences at Ashoka

Sciences really flourish at Ashoka like biological sciences, physics, mathematics, or computer science. This year we are starting chemistry and we have some outstanding people joining our chemistry department to start the chemistry program. So, on the whole, physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, computer science and psychology -- all of these make a very exciting component of science. Historically liberal arts have always been into the sciences and today Ashoka has been making its way back to the full circle. Sciences have made such a runaway success at Ashoka and we have really outstanding departments of biology and soon chemistry and so on.

Uniqueness of Liberal Arts programs

In the first year of the four-year undergraduate program a student spends time on the foundation courses which are absolutely essential but that doesn't leave much time for a great deal of depth into a chosen major. So, what we therefore have is a 3+1-year structure.

At the end of three years, a student graduates with a BA or BSC degree in her or his chosen field. Then the student has the option of returning for a fourth year and in the fourth year there are two options that the student can take. Either the student might wish to do more work, specialize in her or his chosen field, so pick up more physics courses or history courses, do a capstone thesis and do a great deal of intensive research work in that. Or, the student can come back to complete the liberal arts experience in the fourth year, going in for minor concentration in a variety of other fields.

While doing some courses in the chosen major in the fourth year, a variety of subjects can be done. It could be a focused research in the chosen field and that creates the pathway for the students’ life after university. Are they going into research, academics or into other kinds of fields? Preparation time for that is there in the fourth year. That's when they decide which way they are going to go and they can then make an informed choice at that point.

Placements

There was a time when people thought that Liberal Arts students get great offers only in economics or computer sciences. It's amazing that even top IT companies are interested in English and history graduates. What they see in Ashoka University is that the student is someone who has had this holistic experience and as a human being is so well rounded out, has learned to think critically and is a good communicator. So, these are skills that they are looking for and the rest they can provide through their own training. We would earlier have thought of outreach activities for the humanities students or the social sciences. Certainly, for the humanities students it is no longer so. We have seen these results and you know the data is there to show that even banks are very much interested in every kind of Liberal Arts student.

At Ashoka, the Career Development Office (COD) is very active and supports the students in placements. The support that students get is not only at the time of their graduation but continuous beyond that. COD makes sure that each and every student at Ashoka gets a placement. A combination of corporate support and academic support ensures that the students have a very bright future.

The advice to Liberal Arts aspirants was given by: Prof. Malabika Sarkar, Vice-Chancellor, Ashoka 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
• Azim Premji University
• Flame University
• Jindal School of Liberal Arts and Humanities
• Shiv Nadar University
• Symbiosis School of Liberal Arts