Liberal Arts can produce problem-solving professionals

Better industry relevance for humanities and social sciences

Our world does not have many walls. Not anymore, anyway. As rhetorical questions go, is it time for higher education to emulate our world?

The exponential growth of opportunities in humanities and social sciences—especially that triggered by the communication industries, traditional, social and digital media, but now hugely popular in the infotech industries—is here to stay. But are educators readying their students to be problem-solvers?

In my own country, India, education has prided itself on being specialized and (hence) straitjacketed. It’s time to change that. Liberal arts professionals (and until a few years ago, that right there was an oxymoron!) create content, discover who we are, uphold the values of life and art, campaign for protecting the environment, govern and administer nations, help us understand economies, communicate with the world, and more. Unlike their techie counterparts, there is immense need for their broader understanding of the world and the factors that govern it.

As a graduate student of communication in the United States in the 1990s I learned as much from the formats and structures of education and overall systemic environment as I did from the content itself. A few years ago, I had an opportunity to attend an "Invention Convention" for school children up to nine years, whose products were chosen from about 10 schools in (the rather rural) Warren County in New Jersey, USA.

The children came up with products that provided practical answers to some household and social problems of modern American life. What impressed me even more than the design elements was the preparation of the school children to explain, pitch, market and communicate effectively.

The mail-switch product, fully functional, was one such on display there — designed by a sparkling-eyed, shy, 8-year-old young woman. (Would it surprise us, if she went on to do something innovative in her career?) There were 20 such products on display.

The solutions, suitable for their local community, reflected the kids' ability to identify a need, engage with their local environment, and think seamlessly between physics, the social sciences, economics, design, as well as theory and common sense. They did so, in their own way, independently, and with some simple but effective guidance from their teachers.

That's entrepreneurship. Most industries encourage it, and thousands of youngsters every year decide to become entrepreneurs.

Cut to higher education: We have heard the industry rhetoric about the issues about a large percentage of professional graduates:

- Lack of quality output and innovative thinking; not outcome-oriented enough. Advertising professionals, for example, who are not equipped to understand the purpose and the difference between cleverness and effectiveness;

- Employees who lack the ability to apply classroom education to the professions. In particular, fresh graduates who lack the ability to analyze situations from an all-round or 360-degree approach.

- Graduates who do not have the ability or attitude to learn — that supreme capability of problem-solving, to constantly ask fundamental (and original) questions and to seek out innovative answers.

- Graduates who do not know the basic facts about their environment and their world and, in general, have not developed a worldview, resulting in poor situation-negotiating skills.

The combination of learnability and development of a weltanschauung, and the ability to analyze situations and think independently for solutions is critical to all domains.

Using the problem-solving approach

Liberal arts are all about the human factor, and educators must understand how individuals make all the difference. The problem in pedagogy is not so much in the content as it is in the approach and methodology. If each level of higher education in liberal arts provided the following, each of us would feel far more educated than we do today:

1. Provide input in a variety of general subjects – Geography, History, Statistics, Economics, Psychology, to name a few – but convert that input in an applied way; applied to the student’s major field of study. All it takes is a refresher course of what we already learnt at school. But this time around, the subjects are linked to the profession that students have chosen.

2. Build unique curricula around independent research projects. Allow students to evolve interdisciplinary project proposals that would run through a large part of their tenure, and then—under advisement—choose subjects and classes that would be most useful to that project. The successful completion of an interdisciplinary project is a sure way of making graduates think analytically and to break down academic walls.

3. Promote innovative and independent thinking. In a student-centric environment, it is imperative to offer “creative space”—the environment and time for students to explore thoughts on specific subjects. This is possible when students are given food for analytical thought but enough resources and time to back it up. Many (especially) privately owned colleges are anxious to “fill up the time” in a day, as though that were the best way to justify the tuition they charge.

In my experience, almost any course can be delivered in a problem-solution format. For example, in Communication Theory, how will a certain theory be relevant in the future (and so how will you apply it in a certain situation)? Each class is a problem-solving exercise, where a presentation is only a small part. The presentation ends with a problem that must be put to the test. If you plant the right questions in young minds, they evolve into answers.

A simple example of unlocking that potential is for professors to present a problem at the end of each slide in their presentation (“How does the Active Audience theory relate to the current election campaign?”) and groupthink a solution. Thus, the professor’s presentation itself promotes interdisciplinary thinking ... not to mention the ability to think like a researcher.

In a survey I conducted in late 2008, senior industry practitioners and hiring managers in India, USA and UK unanimously agreed that this approach would provide a more global worldview and make students more employable. The challenge would be to train the trainers, but the design of how-to must follow the vision, and periodic training programs would be essential cogs to new or hybrid methods of pedagogy in liberal arts.

Given students’ and institutions’ socialization patterns (especially in India and similar "high-culture" countries), a methodological disruption won’t be easy. While I am sure several universities are using innovative methods of teaching, it is time institutions of learning in general recognized their accountability through making graduates change-makers in their professions—well and truly beyond merely helping them find employment. At India Today Media Institute, we think it is not merely possible but achievable. Much of this has been possible in my previous experiences, but clearly, there is some distance still to cover.

The author is Dean, India Today Media Institute, New Delhi.

First published by LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140614041524-6714335-liberal-arts-education-can-produce-problem-solving-professionals?trk=hb_ntf_MEGAPHONE_ARTICLE_COMMENT