If your child is unsure of what to do after 12th, consider Liberal Arts

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A Liberal Arts degree, which in the west is one of the more common routes to higher education, is relatively new and mostly unknown in India. The defining aspect of most of Indian higher education is the early specialization—students choose a stream (Science, Commerce, Arts) after 10th, and a branch (Computer Engineering, Mechanical, English, Psychology) immediately after 12th. Liberal Arts colleges are springing up in India to fix this.

What is a Liberal Arts degree?

The idea is simple—students get admitted to the college after 12th not only without having to specify which branch they want to specialize in, but also without having to specify the “stream”. In the first year, they can choose to do any courses they find interesting out of a wide variety of courses from all the traditional streams, and more. Only after having spent the year sampling various subjects do they have to declare their specialization. This is their “major” and they spend the remaining 3 years focusing on that. And depending on the major, they can end up with a B.Sc., B.Com., or B.A. degree. In addition to their major, they can also declare 1 or 2 “minors”, which don’t have to be from the same stream. So, for example, a B.A. (Psychology) student could do a minor in Entrepreneurship, or Biology, and a B.Sc. (Computer Science ) student could do a double minor in Economics and Entrepreneurship.

Unlike traditional B.A., B.Sc., or B.Com. courses, most Liberal Arts colleges offer students the option of getting a 4-year degree, so they have enough time to explore multiple areas of study through the minors and electives.

Why Liberal Arts?

Liberal Arts degrees have two advantages over more conventional courses. First, if your child is unsure of what they want to do after 12th, then this is a great way to decide, as opposed to picking something that the parents like. Second, lots of people feel that in the fast changing world of the future, where AI is going to automate more and more tasks from traditional jobs, it is dangerous to be too specialized unless you’re one of the best at that. In other words, it’s fine to do a traditional engineering/medical degree from one of the top colleges, but if you can’t get into one of those, then a Liberal Arts degree better prepares you to succeed in an uncertain world. Engineering might be better for the short-term, Liberal Arts might be better for the long-term. One third of the CEOs of the 500 largest companies (Fortune 500) are Liberal Arts graduates.

Dheeraj Sanghi, professor at IIT-Kanpur, ex-dean at IIIT Delhi, director of PEC Chandigarh, JEE almost-topper, and someone who’s been closely studying the higher education system in India, says that if he was a student today and could choose to be in any college/degree in India, he would pick Liberal Arts in Ashoka.

Liberal Arts in India

Pretty much everybody agrees that the best liberal arts college in India is Ashoka (in Sonipat, near Delhi, est. 2014). Top class faculty, most with PhDs from some of the top universities in the world, great infrastructure, and a focus on what makes sense for a modern higher education degree.

The second best is probably FLAME (in Pune, est. 2015), Pune. I get the impression that FLAME seems to be rather strong in business and finance areas, and relatively weaker in the humanities areas (e.g. history), but still it is far better than most other places you could go to get a rounded education.

After Ashoka and FLAME, the choice is probably between Azim Premji University (in Bangalore, est. 2010), SSLA (Pune, est. 2004), and a recent entrant, Krea University (Sricity, near Chennai, est. 2018).

SSLA (Symbiosis School of Liberal Arts) is the oldest Liberal Arts college in India. They have the right vision, and the current director is a great person, but I get the feeling that they have challenges with faculty retention (and I suspect that the quality of faculty isn’t as top-notch as you’ll find in Ashoka, FLAME, Krea, and Azim Premji). And being a part of the sprawling Symbiosis empire comes with its own advantages and disadvantages.

Azim Premji, and Krea both have the potential of becoming at least as good as FLAME, but they are still very new, so there is the risk of teething troubles.

The other new colleges worth checking out might be Jindal (Sonipat, near Delhi), because their law college is quite good, so they might be able to do a good job of the Liberal Arts college, and Auronya (Puducherry), because Indira Parikh (ex dean IIM-Ahmedabad, and founder of FLAME) is involved.

Shiv Nadar University is another college I keep hearing about. They give a lot of flexibility to students in terms of the different electives, courses, and minors the students can take. However, it appears that they don’t have a Liberal Arts program, and students need to enroll in a specific stream/branch. (Someone please correct me if I’m mistaken.)

Here is a list of other colleges with a Liberal Arts or similar program which I haven’t yet evaluated. If you have opinions on any of these, please leave a comment below.

• PDPU, Gujarat
• Karnavati, Gandhinagar
• NMIMS, Jyoti Dalal School of Liberal Arts
• SRM, Amravati (AP)
• Rabindra Bharati, Kolkata
• DY Patil, Pune
• MIT, Pune
• Manav Rachna
• Women only: SLE, Shri Shankarlal Sundarbai Shashun
• SPPU (Pune University): new 3-year BA (Liberal Arts) program starting from 2019.
• Normal/Traditional Arts colleges that have a good reputation: Madras Christian College, Christ University Bangalore, LSR (Women), TISS Bombay, St. Stephens Delhi, Loyola Chennai, St. Xaviers Bombay.

What about jobs?

What do students do after a Liberal Arts degree? What kind of jobs do they get?

Frankly, I don’t have an answer to that. Most of the Liberal Arts colleges in India are quite new and there isn’t much data about what the students end up doing afterwards, especially in the long-term (which is where liberal arts is supposed to shine). Many of them (60% for example in the case of Ashoka) end up going for further higher education, usually abroad. Some of the top companies are also recruiting these students from campus. Anecdotally, I know that a lot of these students are doing really interesting work afterwards.

But it would be safe to say that the answer to the question of “What to do after the degree?” is much less clear for Liberal Arts than for conventional degrees. This is a new frontier, and nobody knows the long-term value, so I would say this is a high-risk-high-reward situation. If your background isn’t privileged enough that you can handle some uncertainty for some years, I wouldn’t recommend this option. (Speaking of privilege, the fees at these colleges tend to be high, for example, approximately ₹10L per year at Ashoka. But most of them also have financial aid programs that can help in case someone can’t afford it.)

Next Steps

If your child is in 10th or 11th std, both Ashoka and FLAME have a short residential summer camp for 10th and 11th std students to get some exposure to what is Liberal Arts, the various subjects, the faculty, and the teaching styles. I would highly recommend it. Let your child experience what world-class teaching looks like. My son, who hated history as a subject until 10th came back a huge fan of history after doing Ashoka’s Young Scholar program, and it is now one of his favorite subjects. And he will be joining Ashoka this August. Details of these summer programs can be found here and here.

If your child is in 12th, and my description above sounds interesting, you should start applying. The application procedures of most of the schools I mentioned above starts in November-December, and continues in multiple rounds until the summer.

Improvements/Corrections welcome

This article is work in progress. If you see any mistakes, or have suggestions on how to improve it, please leave a comment below, or get in touch with me at navin@smriti.com