The Faculty of Arts at M S University (MSU) on Sunday hosted scholars from across the country to contribute to a report on Liberal Arts Education: Issues of Relevance,Employability and Pedagogy. The sessions were chaired by former MSU Vice-Chancellor Lord Bhikhu Parekh and deliberated by MSU alumnus and former Sociology professor at Delhi School of Economics,University of Delhi,Arvind Shah. Higher Education Commissioner Jayanti Ravi was also present. The MSU project on development of new curricula to nurture social and industrial requirements aims to find ways to mould liberal/humanity sciences to keep them abreast with the progress in the field of science and technology. In his keynote address,Lord Parekh said,As I deliberate on this topic,I take it up with a considerable hesitation keeping the eventual outcome of the report in mind after it is submitted to the government. It is because either the government never acts on reports or the course of implementation is twisted. Nevertheless,he welcomed this move initiated by the Chief Ministers Education Advisor,Kireet Joshi. He said: Liberal education courses should be moulded for the masses by taking cost and new technologies into consideration. He added that there is a need to ask questions that are the basic foundation for exploring the scope of creativity,instead of rote learning and Bucket Theory. Prof Shah,who was a student of MSU in the 1960s,added that there was a time when half a dozen universities taught Economics as a special discipline. This has now reduced to just one or two. This is in spite of having so many vacancies for economists right from the secretariat to the Planning Commission, he said. The report will be submitted to the Department of Higher Education,Government of Gujarat.
