The Evolution of Liberal Arts in the Global Age

Advanced and developing countries across the globe are embracing the liberal arts approach in higher education to foster more innovative human capital to compete in the global economy. Even as interest in the tradition expands outside the United States, can the democratic philosophy underlying the liberal arts tradition be sustained? Can developing countries operating under heavy authoritarian systems cultivate schools predicated on open discussion and debate? Can entrenched specialist systems in Europe and Asia successfully adopt the multidisciplinary liberal arts model? These are some of the questions put to leading scholars and senior higher education practitioners within this edited collection. Beginning with historical context, international contributors explore the contours of liberal arts education amid public calls for change in the United States, the growing global interest in the approach outside the United States, as well as the potential of liberal arts philosophy in a global knowledge economy.

Table of Contents:
Contents Foreword - Cathy N. Davidson Preface Part I: The American Tradition The Yale Report of 1828 A Committee of the Corporation and the Academic Faculty The Declension Narrative, the Liberal Arts College, and the University Bruce A. Kimball Amending the Liberal Arts: An Analysis of Learning Outcomes for Professional Majors Graham N. S. Miller, Cindy A. Kilgo, Mark Archibald, and Ernest T. Pascarella The Lure of Liberal Arts: Emerging Market Undergraduates in the United States Peter Marber Next-Generation Challenges for Liberal Education Jesse H. Lytle and Daniel H. Weiss Part II: Liberal Arts Around the World Précis of a Global Liberal Education Phenomenon: The Empirical Story Kara A. Godwin The Emergence of Liberal Arts and Sciences Education in Europe: A Comparative Perspective Marijk van der Wende Thinking Critically about Liberal Arts Education: Yale-NUS College in Singapore Charlene Tan Academic Freedom and the Liberal Arts in the Middle East: Can the US Model be Replicated? Neema Noori The African Liberal Arts: Heritage, Challenges and Prospects Grant Lilford Part III: Evolutions and Revolutions in the Global Age Is "Design Thinking" the New Liberal Arts? Peter N. Miller Hong Kong’s Liberal Arts Laboratory: Design-Thinking, Practical Wisdom, and the Common Core@HKU Gray Kochhar-Lindgren Liberal Arts Education in the Age of Machine Intelligence Daniel Araya Work, Service, and the Liberal Arts: Campus and Community as Pedagogical Resources Steven L. Solnick The Promise of Liberal Education in the Global Age Christopher B. Nelson Education for Citizenship in an Era of Global Connection Martha Nussbaum About the Editors and Contributors Index

About the Author :
Peter Marber lectures on emerging markets and socioeconomic development in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, USA. Daniel Araya is a Hult-Ashridge Research Fellow at the Hult Center for Disruptive Innovation in San Francisco, USA.

Review :
"These essays provide food for the soul, the mind, and the spirit in these disruptive, chaotic, often brutal and exponentially changing times. We desperately need such reaffirmation of the importance of informed citizenship in despotic times. We also need a next generation to be better educated to understand the moral, social, intellectual, and ethical dimensions of a digital age run amok….It is to the liberal arts that we turn for those consolations, insights, and abiding human powers. It is to these essays that I invite you, now, to turn and be inspired." -From the Foreword by Cathy N. Davidson, Distinguished Professor at Director of the Futures Initiative, Graduate Center, the City University of New York "In an uneasy time, when nuanced habits of mind and deeply engaged citizenship are as needed as at any point in history, The Evolution of Liberal Arts in the Global Age makes a compelling case for the irreplaceable strengths of American liberal arts education. Policy-makers and educators in the United States and around the world should add this volume to their ‘must-read’ lists: it is a clarion call for the advancement of education that can literally help save our world." -Mark Roosevelt, President, St. Johns College "Marber and Araya have gathered a brilliant array of essays that together stage a vital conversation about the intersection of that distinctive American cultural idea, the liberal arts curriculum, and global society’s eagerness to harness today’s new forms of thought, creativity, communication, and commerce for universal betterment. The book’s commentators, consistently informed and astute as they traverse the educational landscape stretching from Asia to Latin America, offer a compelling case for liberal learning’s continued vibrancy and relevance in a fast-changing, challenging, but also potentially thrilling world." -Kimberly W. Benston, President and Gummere Professor of English, Haverford College