The liberal professional? | The Indian Express

The liberal professional? | The Indian Express

Written by Saikat Majumdar |Published: June 7, 2019 12:18:37 am

Majumdar, author of ‘The Firebird’, teaches world literature at Stanford University, US.

The liberal professional?

The idea of energising professional education with elements of liberal education in draft education policy hints at some possibilities of resolution of conflict between the two streams

The idea of energising professional education with elements of liberal education is not far from the original vision behind the IITs, which were always meant to go beyond mere technological competence and create a holistically educated technocrat. (Illustration by CR Sasikumar)

A few years ago, Yale president Peter Salovey explained the rationale behind the Singapore government’s investment in the Yale-NUS College, a liberal arts institution co-founded by Yale and the National University of Singapore. As I had described in these very pages, Salovey had credited the politicians with recognising that the impending arrival of a messy democracy in Singapore made a more open, liberal-arts education essential for the country’s citizens.