‘Significance of liberal arts in IITs and why we need to develop IIT students as critical thinkers’

Everyone is realising that the future is more uncertain than it was once thought. Students of any IIT know that it is a race only a few can win and others will deal with it anyway. The remedies suggested are, however, meandering into the known trajectories of pumping more skills, increasing industry-academia linkages, and focusing more on technical and marketable knowledge. This prevalent narrative is fueled by a utilitarian viewpoint that prioritises immediate economic returns. It sometimes makes the students scapegoats, lab rats or collateral damage of the situation. Is there a way to evaluate the situation differently?

The technocratic loop

We need a new way of looking at the problem to find the solution that sustains the test of changing times. It is therefore important to develop students as critical thinkers and problem solvers, and not just narrowly defined technical experts.

Yes, IITs are institutions that provide technical solutions. But first, putting down the techno-glasses that dominate the IITs is essential. This may sound like a misnomer, but to solve the real world problems, the institutions need to recognise that most problems are not purely technical. They are political and social in nature, or are closely interlinked. Without this comprehension, the technocratic solutions are like patchwork on a dark road. They may solve one issue with a technical intervention, but create multiple others as an aftereffect to be solved, technically again. It is an unending loop.

Significance of liberal arts in IITs

First, a common narrative is that this is why IITs have the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) departments – to teach critical social linkages, ethics and so on. However, is it not every teacher’s job and every department’s responsibility to nurture conscious, and critical experts?

Secondly, there is a need for an out-of-the-box willingness to integrate liberal arts and engage in meaningful interdisciplinary collaborations. It requires course alignment, cross-disciplinary communication, challenging conventions and innovation in pedagogy. Most importantly, it demands a shift towards a non-hierarchical perspective.

The hierarchy of disciplines

Like a caste-based hierarchical system – technical and professional subjects are generally treated with utmost respect and recognition. They are the bread and butter, after all. This is followed by science subjects, and then comes the humanities and social science department(s)- often covertly treated as the ‘other’ or the ‘service department’.

According to a dominant section of faculty members and institutional administrators, the liberal arts departments are there only because of the mandates from the Government (Sarkar Committee in 1948). In other words- it is predominantly seen as an obligation. While this is certainly not the perception of all technical HEIs in India, this narrow view is a sad reality of many.

Disconnect between the policies and practices

Even though the NEP 2020 has highlighted that humanities and liberal arts have the potential to bring an analytical nature and could help in holistic intellectual flourishing of students, the practice says otherwise.

In some IITs, the credit requirements of liberal arts courses have been drastically reduced recently in the name of lack of relevance to the technical students. The freedom to offer core courses has nearly been taken away and are replaced with all, or almost all elective courses. Humanities and Social Science departments are frequently asked to offer exclusive courses with immediate market importance, or saleability. Surprisingly, a few of these courses even restrict students from liberal arts to apply for in the humanities and social science department. These actions are further relegating it to another extension of technocentrism — joining hands in mass producing narrowly defined technical experts, and not on nurturing critical human minds.

Liberal Arts takes time — but we have time

In a market-centric world geared towards immediate saleability, everything has to have immediate impact. It is almost like instant coffee — you want it, you get it. Liberal arts, on the other hand, is like a traditional brewing machine. It takes its time. It also operates with a different philosophy of long term impact. As a result, it is often considered as a misfit and is pushed to the periphery of the IIT systems.

Interestingly, a BTech student gets four years to complete the degree. It is sufficient enough time for the liberal arts subjects to make a mark and prepare them to think critically. It could work, only when they are given sufficient opportunity and equal importance in the tech dominant system.

Creating critical problem solvers beyond the job market

It is important to recall that technocratic approaches often solve the symptoms, not always the real problem. It perceives the problems as independent and not interconnected ones. So when it fails to address a pressing issue such as poor placements or skill shortage- it tries to solve it with more technical inputs. What is needed is a drastically different and inclusive approach.

True inclusion of liberal arts in technical higher education is not only desirable but also an absolute necessity. It would help to re-wire the mechanistic, fact-centric and isolated interpretation of problems and break the technocratic loop.

The question one has to explore here is how cross-disciplinary dialogues on re-modelling education can initiate in the IITs and other tech higher educational institutes. How can we collaboratively create opportunities for developing the future professionals, who are critical thinkers first.

(The writer is an assistant professor at IIT Jammu)