Tag Archives: Liberal Arts

World insight: building a study abroad programme that works

Trisha Craig on the changing face of study abroad programmes 

Published by Times Higher Education, Dec. 27, 2016

For me, study abroad conjures up images of smiling students at the Uffizi gallery in Florence learning about the treasures of Western art, or trekking along the Great Wall while studying the history of imperial China.

Beyond these Instagram-worthy moments, however, what are the real goals and benefits of study abroad programmes? The past century of student mobility shows that the answer is both multifaceted and linked to the broader aims of higher education.

Larger cultural, economic and political forces shape the rationale and the demand for types of programmes. In the aftermath of the two world wars, developing cross-cultural understanding was the focus of many exchanges in the hope that it would lead to peace among nations, while during the Cold War, a security perspective led to increased spending on language programmes and study abroad. Continue reading …

World insight: designing experiential learning at Yale-NUS College

To effectively embed experiential learning, the whole university needs to buy into the idea, says Trisha Craig

Published by Times Higher Education, July 24, 2016
As is well known, liberal arts institutions (and indeed the notion of the liberal arts itself) are under pressure from many quarters. Politicians, funders and parents fear that the model of more general – rather than vocational – training may be both inadequate and too expensive for the economic conditions of slow growth, wage stagnation and underemployment that many advanced economies face. While such fears are real, and are particularly exacerbated in the US where the debt that many students and their families take on to finance university education is high, there is something of a disconnect between the view of the liberal arts’ irrelevance and the needs of the modern economy. Few actually contend that vocational education alone is in the best interest of growth and competitiveness. Continue reading …

World insight: Banging the drum for liberal arts in East Asia

Countries like Singapore are turning to broad-based education just as the US turns away from it, says Trisha Craig

Published by Times Higher Education, February 19, 2016

There is some irony in the fact that at the very moment that the liberal arts model of education is under attack in the West as impractical and irrelevant, it is being embraced in Asia. Places that routinely post the top international test scores in maths and science – the likes of Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea as well as India and China – have moved to create new undergraduate liberal arts programmes or colleges, adopting the broad-based education that defines some of the US’ finest institutions. Continue reading …