Liberal education versus skill development

Debate on liberal vs vocational education in higher institutions, emphasising the need for skill development alongside traditional education.

These days, words like ‘skilling,’ ‘upskilling’ and ‘reskilling’ reverberate in the corridors of higher educational institutions. The recent push towards skilling and vocational education has reignited the debate on liberal versus vocational education highlighting the academic-vocational divide.

In 387 BCE, Plato’s academy in Athens — considered the prototype of a modern university — focussed on elenchus and dialectics. The aim was to train youth to be aware of inbuilt contradictions and inconsistencies in discourses and to direct their thinking in terms of contraries. Aristotle, an alumnus, continued this tradition with his Lyceum, established in 334 BCE.

In modern times, Wilhelm von Humboldt, the architect of Berlin University founded in 1810, proclaimed that a university had a dual mandate: teaching and undertaking research. The Humboldtian model of a university as a research-intensive institution is being followed in the West currently.

John Newman, in his The Idea of a University (1852) argued that knowledge is its own end. Liberal education, according to him, is the “process of training, by which the intellect — instead of being formed or sacrificed to some particular or accidental purpose, some specific trade or profession, or study or science — is disciplined for its own sake, for the perception of its own proper object, and for its own highest culture”. He pointed out that liberal education enables students to have “a cultivated intellect, a delicate taste, a candid, equitable, dispassionate mind, a noble and courteous bearing in the conduct of life”. He made a valuable distinction between liberal knowledge and useful knowledge, and correlated liberal knowledge with university education.

In recent times, India’s National Education Policy 2020 (NEP) categorised higher educational institutions into three clusters: research-intensive universities, teaching-intensive universities, and autonomous colleges vested with the power to award degrees. All three are called upon to focus on teaching and research, but at different levels.

Today, CEOs of reputed companies lament the skills gap in students despite them having gone through undergraduate (and, in some cases, postgraduate) studies and are desperate to close the gap to get hold of industry fit workers. To achieve this, a generous dose of vocational education is recommended so that students are also trained in skills through certificates and diplomas in addition to their degree. The UGC document, “Guidelines for Introduction of Bachelor of Vocation (B.Voc.) Programme in Universities and Colleges under the National Skills Qualifications Framework (NSQF), 2015” mirrors this changing situation: “It has been a long-felt necessity to align higher education with the emerging needs of the economy so as to ensure that the graduates of higher education system have adequate knowledge and skills for employment and entrepreneurship.” Accordingly, three skill development schemes have been introduced: Community College, B.Voc. Degree Programme, and Deen Dayal Upadhyay Kaushal Kendras (DDUKKs).

Should higher educational institutions, especially universities, teach and pursue research or engage in skill development? While some argue that the Humboldtian model should not be tampered with, others point out that universities should meet industry requirements and focus on skill-development. A few others, adopting a pragmatic stance, point out that universities should do both— teach and pursue higher-order research and also prepare students to secure gainful employment.