Learn locally to think globally

Trisha Craig considers how universities can help foster in their students a lifelong commitment to community service

Published by Times Higher Education, April 29, 2016

For university administrators tasked with international strategy, there is hardly a term more widely bandied about than “global citizenship”. If we examine the websites of myriad institutions or the formulations of leaders, it appears that one of the goals higher education has set for itself today is the creation of global citizens. Such a task sounds sensible enough in an increasingly globalised world and implicitly references the historic mission of education to inculcate civic values in those who would go on to play important roles in their communities. Yet global citizenship is a more complicated and contested concept than citizenship, in part because there is no direct parallel in the international arena to the nation state that confers citizenship. 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 …