The role of liberal arts in a skills economy: A case study in Oman

Introduction

The increasing commercialization of education, rendering students as consumers and education as a product is indicative of the direction higher education has taken in the last few decades. Commercialization of education happens at two different levels: administrative and instructional (Tao et al., 2005). Owing to the forces of globalization with concomitant pressures on packaging learning as outcome-based rather than content, input-based classroom experience, a focus on the business model of education has become the global norm (Keeling and Hirsch, 2012). This has had repercussions on the quality of graduates around the world, as the academy has adopted an increasingly consumer-based ethic that has produced costly and dangerous effects: the expectations and standards of a rigorous liberal education have been displaced in favor of professional or job training curriculums (Keeling and Hirsch, 2012). This then affects a wide range of specializations, particularly those which traditionally have been perceived to belong to liberal arts, with images of discourse in ivory towers reflecting the perceived disconnect between learning and the professional world. In a seemingly losing battle between the forcefully articulated world of the market with its vocabulary of investment and profit, and the world of liberal arts with notions of learning for learning’s sake and the creation of ‘cultured’ world citizens, it seems clear who is gradually losing turf, at least in the commercial context (Ostergaard and Nordlund, 2019).

Based on studies in curriculum development and reinventions of English programs in universities globally (ADE, 2018), this study examines the way in which academic range and depth could be aligned to competencies and skills in a liberal arts program to produce graduates with communication competence and transferable affective skills while retaining the breadth of knowledge traditionally intrinsic to such a program. This is challenging because the demands of the market and that of a liberal program are seemingly in conflict. Yet, universities worldwide have created ways to consider these changing requirements by restructuring established programs. This is a major requirement in a market like the United States, where students expect a return on investment due to the cost of a university degree and large student loans. In a state-funded university, the government could be considered the investor seeking a return of dividends through employable citizens. For students in any context, the investment is the time spent on a degree, the expectations of which are knowledge, skills and employability.

The particular context considered in this study is within the Arabian Gulf, with specific reference to Oman. With almost 65 percent of the Arab world’s population younger than 30 and its higher education systems endeavoring to deliver high-quality education to a large population, the regional focus has perhaps lagged slightly behind global trends but has indeed followed them. The demands of the market look toward capitalism rooted primarily in the region. In the Sultanate of Oman, where higher education has existed for only the last 30 years, matters are perhaps complicated by the fact that a majority of undergraduates are first-generation students typically guided by their families and communities into majors they hope will result in prestigious and lucrative careers, such as medicine, law, and engineering. Top students in the Arab world often qualify for scholarships that cover the entirety of their educational experience, including housing and living stipends. But their concerns and expectations are nothing if not amplified by the way they are seen as the future of their country. For Omani students, the expectation of university study is that graduates will emerge prepared to contribute to their economy, to build their country, and to rise to a place of prestige in their society.

The extent to which such expectations are reached, the gaps thus remaining and strategies to fill those gaps is the subject of this research which is based on interviews with present students as well as members of the alumni. The implications of such a study are long ranging, for they impact not only students and faculty but also the employment sector as well as the nation itself. In these economically challenging times, it is imperative that liberal arts programs reexamine themselves and their role in creating a knowledgeable, skilled and competent community.

Literature review

Methodology

To gain a better understanding of the way in which literature impacts student perceptions of their professional futures, semi-focused interviews were conducted with 57 final year students (semesters 7 and 8 of an 8-semester program) in 3 different sessions and with 18 students who had previously graduated. The focus group interviews were preceded by a questionnaire sent via email to all students and participation in the focus groups were optional. The interviews were conducted in August–September 2018 and email conversations continued until February 2019. The interview method was chosen as a way to allow more elaborate conversations with students which a closed ended questionnaire would render impossible. The following research questions were addressed in this study:

RQ1. What is the perception of current students of English Majors to the program as it exists, with specific relation to its address of core areas of language, literature, linguistics and translation?

RQ2. To what extent has the current program provided adequate knowledge of subject specific skills which would address the pool which would continue to pursue academic careers?

RQ3. To what extent has the current program provided adequate transferable skills, as identified in the literature of education, to prepare them for the market?

RQ4.To what extent are students self-reflexive about the range and depth and of transferable skills intrinsic to their program?

RQ5. To what extent are students aware of the potential of their major in preparing them for a range of career options?

As part of an ongoing investigation, the findings of this study indicate ways in which curriculum changes should start with a foundational understanding of student perceptions and changing contexts. The recommendations that have emerged from this study point to ways in which centering students in the task of curriculum development will result in more sustainable and meaningful outcomes with real world implications.

Results

Copious data based on student and alumni feedback suggests that this program is no longer viable. ⁷

The five British and American survey courses were overwhelmingly singled out as being repetitive, irrelevant historically and culturally inappropriate. The Shakespeare course came under scrutiny as well for its adherence to the archaic and the imperial, while the most popular courses were World Literature and Modern Arabic Literature in English. Students pointed to the variety of texts in these courses and the ease of covering Arabic texts with which they were at least nominally familiar. Other popular courses were creative writing and electives offered in the summer semester, including specialized courses in Indian literature and rhetoric in world speeches. Alongside these courses, there was particular demand for more opportunities for speaking, whether through another course or within the existing ones. Rather more subdued but consistent demand by the alumni and present students was for professional writing courses in specific areas. Other comments given by students included the overlapping of information in different courses, the focus on ‘history’ in the survey courses, the overt centering of western texts and the total lack of experiential learning opportunities within the curriculum. While students typically disagreed amongst themselves about which specific courses were useful and enjoyable, the overall feedback showed a wide gap in student expectations of their major and its actual role in acquiring a career. Students felt completely isolated from the realities of the marketplace, with some saying they had no idea what was expected of them once they graduated: ‘I don’t know how I will use what I have learnt,’ ⁸ was not an infrequent refrain. This was underscored by alumni who indicated that they had not been supported in their program by ancillary systems such as Career Guidance Centers or by faculty presentations to indicate the direction their majors could take them. As one of the alumni members said, ‘We had to find out ourselves that nobody wanted us, nobody knew why we did this course. They only said, ‘you must like reading since you did literature’ but that is not useful. I read so much, I learnt so much, but I just don’t know what to do now.’ Continuing conversations with alumni and current students sketched a picture of graduates being thrown in the deep end of a curriculum with no support, training or networking opportunities.

An interesting observation in a series of focus group interviews conducted with 50 graduating students as they reflected back on the program was their critique of teaching methods instead of course content. Most students reported that they could not see the relevance of literature courses to their life and career upon graduation, though many stated that they believed there was an implicit significance that they wished would be made explicit to them during class sessions. The connection between texts and career, text and community remained elusive and they felt more often than not that it was expected of them to consider and articulate what use they would eventually make of the takeaways from these classes. Most students voiced frustration with the fact that they had knowledge, had even enjoyed their classes but had no clue how any of that could be of use to them in their quest for a career. To quote some students:

I really enjoyed doing all the literature, stories, novels, everything. I wish I could use it in my career, but I don’t think I can, I don’t know … .

Even members of the department alumni concurred with these fears: ⁹

Everywhere I go for an interview, they ask what I learnt, and they say ‘you have done literature, how can we use your major in our company?

As the most important stakeholders in the educational process, students have been routinely placed at the center of discussions on teaching methodologies and curriculum design. Urlaub (2014) contends that ‘student perceptions of content should … be the center of the collegiate foreign language curriculum’ (p. 1) and calls for student-centered learning to be more than an oft-repeated slogan (Moyle and Wjingaards, 2012) are increasingly becoming the norm. In this context, the merging of student perceptions with an existing curriculum and program to ascertain potential for change is both pedagogically relevant and structurally important. From as early as the late 1990s, foreign language programs have heeded the call for “a more coherent curriculum in which language, culture and literature are taught as a continuous whole” (Modern Language Association, 2018).

For a good part of the past 30 years, professional voices in the United States have urged administrations there to reconsider the role and scope of the foreign language program and now it seems time to consider this in Oman and elsewhere. There is much research that attests to the advantages of student-centered and even learner-determined curriculums in the foreign language classroom, to the philosophy that when learners determine the topics, reading materials, and research methods, students develop autonomy and agency, not just toward acquisition of the foreign language, but to the learning itself. When students accept roles of self-directed and autonomous learners, they take full charge and responsibility for learning and educational outcomes.

The pedagogical advantages to project-based and learner-determined curriculum in the foreign language classroom and elsewhere are many: project work focuses on content learning rather than on specific language targets, thus enabling students to study and complete projects on real-world subject matter and topics they are interested in; project work is student-centered, and cooperative, and students strategize learning, learning to share workloads and resources throughout the learning process. Project work also leads to the authentic integration of skills required for professional and real-life tasks, culminating in a tangible end product that can be shared with others and has a real purpose, also leading students to value the process as much as the final product. There is ample evidence to suggest that project-based and learner determined curriculums provide language students myriad opportunities to focus on fluency and accuracy at multiple stages within the process. This learning process empowers students as it motivates them, building student confidence, self-esteem, and autonomy as well as improving students' language skills, content learning, and cognitive abilities. Project-oriented work embraces principles of learning that are promoted by various theories, approaches, and philosophies of learning (Omaggio-Hadley, 2001; Stoller, 1997). According to Chun and Plass (2000), "Constructivist approaches to learning advocate allowing learners not only to interact directly with information to be learned, but also to add their own information and construct their own relationships” (160). By taking a major role in planning and negotiating course content, students become active contributors to their language learning rather than being passive recipients of knowledge.

Bridging the gap: Solutions

Bachelor’s degrees conferred to English majors in the United States are down 20 percent since 2012, but globally the number of English degrees continues to increase (ADE, 2018). Additionally, responsive departments globally that know how to market their worth to students are finding ways to thrive, says a new analysis from the Association of Departments of English (ADE). The group, a facet of the globally renowned Modern Language Association, says its report is the most comprehensive study of English departments to date: ‘While declines in the number of undergraduate majors have affected English departments widely and at all types of institutions, most departments are exploring ways to respond’ (ADE, 2018).

Research increasingly suggests that majoring in English prepares students for a life of careers, not a career for life. Given that the millennial professional world offers a wide range of opportunities, and that traditional labels of administration are being dismantled, the challenge of liberal arts, such as the one being discussed here, remains to prepare students for just such unforeseen areas of work. Based on The Task Force on Higher Education and Society published by UNESCO and the World Bank, Bloom and Rosovsky (2003) define the liberally educated person as one who:

can think and write clearly, effectively, and critically, and who can communicate with precision, cogency, and force;

Contrary to expectations, in the developing world, EFL (English as a Foreign Language) context, liberal arts are gaining ground. Japan, China, India as well as smaller nations like Bangladesh and Bhutan have established educational models which focus on broader learning outcomes rather than strictly professional ones (Godwin, 2015). The revamping of the Singapore educational system to simultaneously reflect national cultural identity and internationalism could be used as an interesting system whereby students could interact in diverse multicultural contexts while being rooted to their national identity. This is an imperative outcome of liberal education, not a narrowly focused one on professional or vocational needs. In fact, as English (2012) suggests, ‘English is a well-established and popular discipline in many countries where it is predominantly taught as a foreign language’ (p. 27), much more so in emerging economies, such as those of the Gulf where a pool of educated and skilled are imperative to fulfil the national mission of full employment. The challenge continues to be the way in which an arts degree could help equip students to operate in a context which is not only professionally relevant but perceived to be so. ¹⁰ As long as English majors are viewed as being irrelevant to immediate market requirements and addressing culturally distant texts and issues, the programs offered will remain under threat of extinction unless they are reinvented, either entirely or through transformation of some components. While major changes to a program would entail holistic administrative overhaul, establishing smaller changes in methodology and administration within certain courses could pave the way for larger changes in an arts program. Several examples of smaller, wholly manageable changes seen throughout the developing world include departmental pursuit of strategic partnerships that result in internships and jobs for graduates. English departments could also revitalize themselves through project-based learning and capstone courses that result in a tangible, usable product. A reconsideration of the traditional literary canon is useful to bring course offerings up to date with millennial students and post-millennial interests; British and American survey courses might seem (and be) awfully neocolonial in this post-colonial age, and certainly literature could be taught through a more modern, inclusive lens.

This leads to a major challenge in revamping the programs. Teaching faculty and English department administrators will need to reconceptualize how they conceive of the link between language and culture, and will want to consider context in the teaching of any courses toward the English degree; departments and majors must also offer linguistic and pedagogical respect for a range of English dialects by offering professional support for the maintenance and use of other languages besides English, and by introducing critical awareness into the curriculum so that students can better understand the interrelationship of language, literature, discourse, and power (Warschauer, 2000). Finally, students and faculty in English departments should be taught not only the value of the English degree but should become practiced and fluent in the marketing of it, the act of translating the oft-imagined abstract into the concrete, the valued and valuable.

In recent years, stakeholders in the American system have suggested that the focus on reimagining the liberal arts degree is off-centered. Gerber (2012) noted that in most university systems, advisory boards and boards of trustees are comprised of the already- (often hereditarily) wealthy and those who have long been off the job market: basically, the powerfully out of touch. Gerber calls for the redistribution of how universities treat all majors, and all students, pointing to the success of a model like Babson College, where the faculty has pioneered its own teaching method, applying entrepreneurial thinking and hands-on learning to every aspect of campus life. All Babson students, including those whose area of concentration is literary and visual arts, upon matriculation go immediately to work with a team to create, develop, launch and manage a new business (and they donate their profits to nonprofits). Students spend just 14 hours a week in class – the other 154 are spent in special interest housing or working on student-led initiatives. Programs like Babson’s, according to Gerber and the U.S. News World Report, which consistently ranks Babson first in entrepreneurial education, are worth considering not merely because they create the next generation of business owners and freelancers, people who can easily adapt to the future job market—but also because entrepreneurship education gives young people a toolkit to apply their field of study to the real world. At a school like Babson then—and there are others, Lewis and Clark, Reed, Oberlin, and Davidson College, to name a few—the courses remain the same, but the pedagogy shifts, for example in literature to ‘feature active engagement with a range of literary, visual, musical, and creative arts … ’ challenging students ‘to think and write with increased depth, independence, and creativity about how the arts express and shape individual as well as cultural experiences and identities.’ Being conscientious about entrepreneurism, literary studies ‘also explore how the arts inspire joy while educating and enriching’ (Babson College, 2020). While acknowledging differences in context and available facilities, such a model could help to point toward ways in which an academic program in the Arts could be more effectively linked with the professional world.

While there are not yet entire programs or universities in the Gulf having rebranded themselves thusly, there are global examples of universities that endeavor to meet somewhere between the perceived impractibility of the liberal arts and knowledge production for job attainment. When the British University in Dubai was established in 2003, a range of leading organizations including the Emirates Group, Dubai National Gas Company (DUGAS), Dubai Cable Company (DUCAB) and the Emirates Foundation provided funding for the appointment of staff, funding or opportunities for research, and scholarships for students (Lock, 2008). Updates to and investment in liberal arts programs in countries such as Singapore prove that liberal arts, when connected to the economy and understood by stakeholders as producing creative problem solvers and articulate thought leaders, are a vital part of any nation’s future.

There are multiple challenges to establishing links between the liberal arts and professional fields and encouraging faculty to think of themselves as teaching professors is paramount amongst potential impediments. Classroom climate profoundly shapes the experience of both instructor and students, and at least part of the gap between a liberal arts education and its practicality could be filled by meaningful classroom instruction and assessments that are more clearly tied to today’s job market. Studies show that faculty are often reluctant to change their teaching approaches, even when they know of the advantages for students for reasons including lack of time to plan for teaching, in addition to other responsibilities and a perceived or explicitly stated administrative emphasis of research over teaching. Sturtevant and Wheeler (2019) found barriers to include student underpreparedness for class making active learning activities difficult for faculty, and a lack of training on the instructor’s part in innovative teaching methods. Ultimately, faculty will change only when supported by a department that encourages a classroom pedagogy that links the liberal arts and professional field, by a department that encourages innovations in pedagogy and supports activities that will change classroom culture.

Administrative and departmental support is a piece of the larger challenge of linking the liberal arts with professional fields, to create support or buy-in amongst all stakeholders. This must emanate from university administration, and when attempting large-scale change with multiple parties, there must be good and frequent communication, spaces in which every stakeholder feels represented and has a voice, a willingness to compromise, and mutual agreement on certain premises. Above all, the motion for change must be endeavored upon with honesty and clarity. After stakeholder buy-in and implementation of changes that will more favorably regard liberal arts as an area of study for the job market, changes must be properly advertised. This should not be challenging if there is all-around agreement and understanding of stakeholders, but rebranding should be intentional and again, initiated with involvement of all stakeholders.

In terms of further studies, there is a need for deliberation in the areas of dissemination and implementation. There is a need to involve potential employers to identify their perceptions and requirements in the next few years. If it is accepted that liberal arts is viewed as less professionally attuned to the economy than other disciplines, and if the current business model of higher education means that there will be winners and losers, and if there is a way to rebrand the liberal arts, then the implications of such an effort at rebranding should be studied. Future studies must consider the implications of academic prioritization models, the risks of rebranding humanism studies, researching the long-term effects on students, on the economy, and on society.

Conclusion

Can we rebrand the humanities? Yes, and the results of this initial study suggest that it’s a needed endeavor, perhaps particularly in the complex economies of the Gulf States. Employers often have no understanding of the transferable skills embedded in liberal arts education, and students and faculty are not able to eloquently articulate them. Liberal arts education exists within a new university framework of professionalization of administration and the culture of globalization. These are new times that call for new ways. The liberal arts curriculum would benefit from establishing a dynamic relation with students, involving them in decision making processes and unpacking the mystery of the professional world at an early stage in their university life. This could be done by encouraging student research, thereby facilitating innovation and establishing a research culture. As Kellman (2018) states, there ought to be a way of establishing ‘alternate modes of consumption’ (6) which work within the framework of the liberal arts without being dismissed for an ivory tower impulse. To avoid extinction, the discipline must adapt and evolve, not only to stay relevant but also to ensure its own survival. If there is ‘manifestly a disjuncture between the intangible and practical values of the humanities and the perceptions of that value’ (Hay, 2016), a certain amount of adaptation would be central to the project of liberal arts as conceived in the literature program. The prescriptions are many and varied, ranging from calling from interdisciplinary connections between the arts and the sciences, framing humanities with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives which would include environmental concerns, embracing digital technologies in digital humanities by focusing on experiential learning (DiConti, 2004) and just being able to ‘map the new global landscape on which we are operating’ (English, 2012: xii). Perhaps an important outcome of this research is not so much the value of a liberal arts degree which remains undeniable, but the processes whereby students themselves could be made aware of this connection between academic pursuit and professional opportunities accorded or available to them. Such links could be made through formal or informal internships, addition of experiential learning through site visits, and by creating digital spaces for contributions to journals and literary magazines and other media. Whatever the avenues chosen, it is imperative that the role of the liberal arts be redefined to fit into a rapidly changing world in ways that accommodate a range of stakeholders, particularly the students for whom the arts must be capable of offering a range of knowledge and skills to equip them to participate in the skills economy of this millennium.