Search results

This paper seeks to discuss the role of a public liberal-arts university in education.

The author first defines the principles and definitions of liberal education, then analyses these ideas in relation to public liberal-arts universities.

Liberal education holds enduring value in a world where state support for higher education is steadily decreasing and the author concludes that society needs public liberal-arts universities in order to maintain freedom of thought and democracies.

This piece presents a view of public liberal-arts universities in the wider context of liberal education, recession and worldwide threats to democracy and personal freedoms.

This article explores leadership studies as a complementary and integrating discipline in undergraduate liberal education curricula. A significant historical purpose of liberal education was to liberate and prepare its graduates to be active and capable participants and leaders in social, economic, religious, and political realms. This historical purpose has become resurgent in recent critical examinations of liberal education. Some now argue that the undergraduate liberal education should return, in part, to preparing citizens for leadership responsibilities necessary to strengthen our communities, nation, and democratic institutions.

There appears to be a symbiotic relationship between liberal education and leadership studies. The knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary for effective leadership appear to be closely aligned with the desired learning outcomes of a liberal arts education, regardless of major. This article concludes that leadership studies may be an important and beneficial component of undergraduate liberal education curricula.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how liberal higher education can strengthen vocational higher education.

The paper uses Shay's (2013) framework of curriculum differentiation to articulate how the strengths and shortcomings of liberal education differ from those of vocational education and to allow the differences highlighted to inform a resolution to each other's shortcomings.

There is nothing new in the findings that liberal education differs from vocational education and that both have shortcomings. What the paper presents is a viewpoint that the differences are not confirmation that these two approaches to education are in opposition but rather that they complement each other. The strength of one is the weakness of the other.

The perspective taken in this paper is developed using the language of semantic density (SD) and semantic gravity (SG). Using Shay's semantic field of recontextualized knowledge, this paper suggests that liberal and vocational education inhabit two sides of contexts and concepts continua. The paper further proposes that both are alike in a meaningful way because both have unsuccessfully managed the role of context in their curricula.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the prerequisite conditions for implementing a liberal management education and for fostering ethical students using examples from the core curriculum at Singapore Management University (SMU).

Beginning with a reading of the Carnegie Foundation's Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education: liberal learning for the professions (2011), the paper examines the contribution and limits of the findings and recommendations before discussing the place of the liberal arts in the modern university and describing a case study of liberal management education in process at SMU. It concludes with a reading of the work of Emmanuel Levinas and Asian philosophy as the basis for an ethical management education.

The paper uncovers a central shortcoming in an otherwise important Carnegie study: that business education is unlike other professional education because it lacks an autonomous discipline that studies business knowledge production as an object. Consequently, applying the liberal arts to business education risks neglecting the critical side of the liberal arts. With only the reflective side of the liberal arts in operation, management education cannot be grasped as a specific sphere of values within the pluralism of spheres advocated by the Carnegie report. Only by recreating the function of an autonomous discipline with an objective lens on business knowledge within the core curriculum at SMU can that university attempt to incorporate both the critical and reflective side of the liberal arts in management education. This kind of liberal management education can indeed lead to respect for the values of the others in the way that ethical philosopher Emmanuel Levinas envisioned.

Further development of the SMU core curriculum is necessary in order to confirm the hypothesis that the liberal arts can be brought together with management education to produce more mature, ethical students.

Liberal management education curriculum must incorporate the critical function of the liberal arts when faced with business knowledge production in order to promote a pluralist ethics. If SMU is successful, it can become a model for other global business schools in Asia and beyond.

Asian higher education is ongoing a rapid transformation in values. The shift is towards understanding the wider relationship between universities and society and the role of an education citizenry. Liberal management education can be a bridge to this new world of higher education in Asia, and beyond.

This discussion provides a fuller understanding of the two-sided nature of the liberal arts and the importance of both sides for building a liberal management education and creating ethically mature students.

In College Learning for the New Global Century, the National Leadership Council of Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) argue for a liberal education for all students because “(i)n an economy fueled by innovation, the capabilities developed through a liberal education have become America’s most valuable economic asset.” (LEAP, 2007). The Business for a Better World Center and the School of Business at George Mason University endorse this view and have applied the liberal education approach to the study of business. This paper aims to explore the current environment of business education, the role of liberal education and the school’s programs and their benefits.

This paper relies on a case-study approach.

In this paper, the authors explore how George Mason University’s School of Business brings a liberal education approach to business education and draws on a combination of high impact practices, such as first-year seminars, common intellectual experiences, learning communities, collaborative assignments, undergraduate research, community-based learning, internships, capstone courses and projects and diversity and global learning (Kuh, 2008). Mason’s experience demonstrates the feasibility and benefits of this integration.

This case study provides unique insight into how business schools can integrate a liberal education approach into business education with successful results. As such, the paper contributes to the growing body of research on the benefits of liberal arts and business education models as a means of addressing global goals and provides a valuable case study to understand better the necessity of integrative, interdisciplinary learning.

Using literature and related documents, the study reviews and analyzes the global trend of liberal arts education (LAE) resurgence and experimentation in different societies across three continents, East Asia, North America, and Western Europe. The study explores how LAE has been incorporated into different societies, how the variations in each model reflect local traditions and values, and what these adaptations contribute to the new LAE model. Through the angle of new institutional theory, the study focuses specifically on how these local models are impacted by institutional factors, the constraint of market, policy, state, as well as historical figures or organizations. This research with document analysis of global LAE summarizes the innovation and insights to date and calls for further research on LAE through new institutional theory and ideal types. This study builds the foundation for further research exploring the implementation and educational outcomes of LAE in different societies.

This paper seeks to outline the element of a liberal management education that would attend to the full human development of undergraduate management students enabling them to exercise the responsibility and leadership that the profession and practice of business and management require. It places such an education in the context of the global university today, and points to the shortcomings in management education as it is currently taught, the challenges facing implementation, and finishes with the example of Singapore Management University.

This is a discursive discussion piece drawing on philosophical texts, contemporary debates on management education, historical perspectives on the University, and the authors’ combined experience in management education and business school leadership. It was written as an argument to be debated by future interlocutors.

The article concludes that liberal management education faces obstacles to implementation. These obstacles are recast as shortcomings in management education itself. It concludes that in part by recognising and overcoming these shortcomings liberal management education holds prospects for improving the full human development of undergraduate management students, and in so doing creating business leaders who have the maturity to take responsible and visionary decisions.

The article points to the need to elaborate a concrete curriculum across the spectrum of courses and subjects in management education.

The article invites other business schools to enter into a conversation about liberal management education and share experiences of implementing reforms in management education.

Liberal management education aims to produce citizen‐leaders who have the maturity and enlightened perspective to lead in organisations and in society. The intention of the article is to encourage debate and adoption in some form of a liberal management education philosophy and curriculum at other business schools beyond Singapore Management University, with the hope of shifting the emphasis in management education to preparing students as mature citizens as well as business leaders.

Many have discussed the problems of the contemporary global university, but few have considered undergraduate management education as a crucible for working out the conflicts and challenges facing today's university.

During the 1990s the value to an intending professional accountant of undertaking a period of liberal (general) studies was promoted internationally by a number of individuals and organisations, including the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) and the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants (the “Institute”). The Institute significantly changed its admissions policy for Chartered Accountants in 1996 and one change was to require four years of degree level study with a compulsory liberal studies component. This study surveys the perceptions of New Zealand accounting practitioners on the impact of this compulsory liberal component. The results of this study demonstrate that there is little support from accounting practitioners for IFAC’s claim that liberal education “can contribute significantly to the acquisition of professional skills”, including intellectual, personal and communication skills. In addition, the majority of respondents did not perceive any improvements in the professional skills of the staff that had qualified under the Institute’s current admissions policy. However, any perceived improvements were mainly attributed to the Institute’s admissions policy change. Notwithstanding the lack of support for the assertion that liberal education develops professional skills, there is a strong belief by respondents in the value of liberal education for intending professional accountants.

Issues of women’s education and empowerment of women have been incorporated in the framing of the role of women in international development from the 1970s, primarily as a response to the liberal feminist movement agenda of the time. This analysis examines the degree to which liberal feminism and liberal feminist theory is reflected in comparative education scholarship in the lead up to and beyond the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The analysis first explores the underpinnings of liberal feminism, which constitutes the ideal embedded in development education for girls and women. It follows up with a reflection on the literature in the field of comparative education that reference liberal feminism framework and feminist theory in exploring educational issues and ways in which the theory is located in the research. Illustration of examples that demonstrate the limits of liberal feminism as a theoretical framework and barriers to the use of liberal feminist theory as an ideological guide are captured in the findings. The search is limited to the six dominant scholarly outlets in the field of comparative education; namely Comparative Education Review (CER), Comparative Education (CE), Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education (Compare), Prospects: Quarterly Review of Comparative Education (Prospects), International Review of Education (IRE), and the International Journal of Educational Development (IJED). Only works that explicitly mention liberal feminism/liberal feminist perspectives are included in the analysis. This research contributes to the acknowledgement of the liberal feminist theory in development education and for the field of comparative education. It will also help with understanding the politics of ideology and representation in scholarship and development interventions.

The purpose of this essay is to comment on the philosophy of liberal education and its structure; the goal of general education and how it fulfills the goals of liberal education; and the four key elements of liberal education, including the “liberating” aspects of general education, the need for an emphasis on questions more than on answers, the meaning of a global perspective, and the connections of each of the above to extracurricular experiences and engaged citizenship.

This essay is a review of the topics of liberal and general education, their components, and their importance.

Using the design and methodology mentioned above as a way to explore the purpose, the essay reveals selected universal truths about a liberal or “liberating” undergraduate education.

The approach that is detailed can be assessed in comparison to other formulations of liberal and general education.

The framework described above suggests possibilities for redesigning liberal and general education programs so as to have a greater impact on undergraduate student learning and to foster experiential and interdisciplinary learning.

While this is a personal perspective based on many decades of senior positions in higher education, it is based not only on the author's own analysis and thinking, but also on a broad understanding of the literature about these topics.