Adapting to Change: The Power of Liberal Education at SAGE University Bhopal

In this ever-changing world that we live in and succeeding, we must be able to adapt to the changes as they come. Liberal education offers skills which teach adaptability to its students in their personal and professional life. The most significant point that would explain the relevance of liberal education and its prospects is that the students passing out from a liberal school are ready for their first jobs and jobs that haven’t been created. Yes, you heard that right! Many typical jobs today will disappear in the next few years, and many new jobs will come up that we don’t know about just yet. 

Liberal education is a multi-disciplinary approach to undergraduate and postgraduate education which is future–proof and offers adaptability to its learners in this dynamic world.

Centre for Liberal and Management Education at SAGE University Bhopal believes in creating an engaged community of students. Students become engaged academically through their work on class projects requiring imagination and intellectual commitment; they become engaged socially through participation in a variety of clubs, sports and athletics, and co-curricular activities; and they become engaged in the society through real life projects and programs that address the needs of not only the city of Bhopal and the state of Madhya Pradesh but of entire country and the world

The curricular and co-curricular programs at Centre for Liberal and Management Education of SAGE University Bhopal emphasize integration. The University's liberal education core curriculum and major and minor courses help students understand the relationships between diverse fields of study and the impact that people, ideas and events have in all parts of their lives. They make connections among courses and between campus and social life. The academic, social and personal realms of students' lives are integrated, so that students see their studies as an important part of who they are and who they will become

The commitment of Centre for Liberal and Management Education at SAGE University Bhopal is anchored in three principles:

• Engagement
• Integration
• Independence

The Five Liberal Education Learning Outcomes

1. Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is the analysis and evaluation of complex ideas, artifacts, information, and arguments as a basis for formulating a well-reasoned belief, judgment, or conclusion. 

2.  Ethical Reasoning 

Ethical Reasoning requires students to recognize ethical issues, identify their own ethical positions and analyze other ethical perspectives in real-world situations in order to consider the impact of decisions and actions on other individuals, society, and the environment

3.  Communication 

Communication requires students to recognize and utilize the most appropriate means to address specific audiences in relevant contexts or genres in order to effectively inform or persuade.  

4.  Creativity 

Creativity is the ability to utilize skills and strategies to synthesize ideas, perspectives, information, or materials in original and self-aware ways, and to use that synthesis to generate imaginative acts or products. 

5.  Quantitative Literacy 

Quantitative literacy is competency in working with numerical data to reason or solve problems, the ability to make judgements and draw conclusions supported by quantitative evidence, and the ability to communicate those arguments utilizing quantitative tools. 

SAGE University has launched various undergraduate Honours programs for students pursuing liberal education. The liberal education program is conceived to bring societal change through education. The courses which are taught under the programs include management, commerce, literature, philosophy, history, computer science, economics and design.

The program offers unique opportunities to the students to build an international career. The program provides a platform to the student to increase intellectual growth, be more creative, and at the same time to inculcate rational thoughts. The course has a rigorous focus on study and improving different learning techniques using different modes and models.

About the Author:

 

 

Dr Manoj Bhatia, Head, Centre for Liberal and Management Education, Sage University Bhopal

 

 

 

Note: The views expressed in this article are solely author’s own and do not reflect/represent those of Shiksha