A Liberal arts education is one in which a college undergraduate studies diverse subjects in the fields of social sciences, mathematics, natural sciences and humanities. Common in the US, this system is believed to encourage critical thinking and analytical skills as well as a problem-solving approach and the ability to self-learn — all essential in making a responsible, thinking citizen.

With deans and instructors of liberal arts colleges constituting the panel, the session titled ‘What’s Liberal about the Liberal Arts’ was an unmitigated paean to the excellence of a liberal arts education, and its perceived superiority over all other methods of imparting education. The point of comparison was ‘practical’, ‘vocational’ or ‘professional’ education — all used interchangeably by the panellists — which was assumed not to convey quite the same benefits.

After moderator Framji Minwalla, assistant professor and chairperson of social sciences at Institute of Business Administration, explained the need for a liberal arts and sciences education in an introduction that made many a reference to the curricula of Western universities, Barbara Metcalf, South Asian historian and former Dean of the College of Letters and Science at the University of California, gave a historical perspective to the term ‘liberal arts’ — “This was the education for free men to make a contribution to society, the training they needed in order to be enlightened citizens.”

Dr Aaron Mulvany, an assistant professor at Habib University, bemoaned the “commodification of education” by the neoliberal policies of Ronald Reagan. For him, a liberal arts education was about liberation — from stereotypes, misconceptions and “bad ideas”: “It’s about examining our histories from a fresh perspective. We may find that what we have always believed is misguided, incorrect. We are not really civilised people if we take what we receive as given without examining it, without challenging it.”

Unfortunately, Mulvany undercut his own argument while speaking about Margaret Thatcher whose degree in chemistry was not an example of the liberal arts system. By declaring that she had an education that allowed her to pull from many different backgrounds to shape her ideas in new fields, he proved how incidental a liberal arts education really is to skills such as critical thinking and problem solving. Neoliberal policies were possibly less relevant to the audience in Karachi than the “grade-grubbing culture” described by Aliya Iqbal-Naqvi. The IBA instructor and “former runway model”, as she was introduced by Minwalla, described her transition from a Pakistani school to a US college as “an experience that changed my life forever. It was so mind-blowing to learn how to think and critique my received knowledge.”

Here’s the thing though: for all the talk about being ‘free’ and ‘liberated’, the panellists and the audience showed a tacit but willing bondage to the exigencies of the global economy. Mulvany had started off declaring that “The laser-like focus on disciplines that can get us jobs actually shackles our thinking.” But he smoothly transitioned to the argument that a liberal arts education would in fact be very helpful in inserting oneself in the global economy since it produced “people who can communicate, can analyse, are flexible and can teach themselves.”

Similarly, Metcalf held up for scorn a proposal by the US government that colleges would be ranked by the income that students produced in their first years. Then, she went on to emphasise that a liberal arts education imparts lifelong skills which are helpful when a typical person has to reinvent themselves several times over the course of a long career. Such reversions made one feel that ideals such as that of being a responsible, thinking citizen were tenable only when the primary concern of securing a job in the global economy was fulfilled and so all these fine ideas did nothing to de-commodify education.