Thursday, March 14: Liberal Arts in India

The point of the Seminar is not necessarily to identify a specific partner for an institutional exchange. Still, we can't help but pick favorites. The two campuses we visited today both stood out as particularly congenial places for students from the United States to study. That they are located in Pune, a city I had never heard of before this trip, speaks to my provincialism. If top-notch colleges can be located in remote corners of the United States, then why wouldn't I find impressive Indian campuses in Pune?

The FLAME campus has a unified, modern aesthetic.

The universities' improbable names contributed to my surprise at their quality. FLAME University is an acronym for Foundation for Liberal Arts and Management Education. Both FLAME and Symbiosis International, which we visited in the afternoon, are examples of private institutions  funded by philanthropic founders. In the case of FLAME, a Jain family made wealthy from the financial industry gave the money to start the university and continue to finance it. In fact, when the Vice Chancellor (equivalent to President) addressed us, he said that their goal is neither growth nor revenue generation because they have a debt-free balance sheet already.

FLAME is one of only two liberal arts colleges in India. The government doesn't allow them to structure a four-year degree, so they have adapted the U.S. model for the Indian context. It's an entirely residential campus with small, discussion-based seminars and experiential projects. When a group of students answered our questions, two who had spent a semester abroad at Wellesley College remarked at how familiar classes in Massachusetts felt to them.

Current students at FLAME shared their experiences.

As an autonomous university, FLAME is free to charge its own tuition. Fees come to $12,000 (US) per year including room and board. The academic dean we spoke with expressed how much of a challenge it was to convince Indian parents to invest in a humanistic education that does not lead to a specific profession. Curiously, the student body is 70% female partly because Indian families expect sons to become breadwinners, so affluent parents may be more likely to support their daughters to receive a less instrumental education.

The bus drove us to Symbiosis International University. Symbiosis is also a private institution founded by a generous donor. The founder, a botanist, envisioned a university intentionally for students for outside India to learn alongside Indians modeled on the concept of symbiosis he observed in nature. The campus was not as lush or well landscaped as FLAME's, but they made up for it in hospitality. They invited several faculty and students to join us for lunch. For the first time, we met international students including women and men from Africa pursuing degrees and two women from the United States on a semester abroad.

One of my colleagues poses in front of Symbiosis.

After the lunch, our hosts guided us to an auditorium set up with several round tables. They made sure that each table had a mix of U.S. representatives, Indian faculty, and international students. It's revealing how each university we visit receives the same set of instructions from the USIEF organizers and then chooses to execute it differently. Symbiosis leaders talked only generally about their multi-campus university. Instead, they instructed each small group to discuss the trade-off between affordability and quality in each country's higher education system.

Through the conversation I gained a clearer understanding of the Indian context. The country is not only soon to become the world's most populous, but also has the fastest growing economy. They face tremendous pressure to increase higher education enrollment to meet the demand for growth. However, their institutions respond to increased demand by lowering quality. Those of us from the U.S. could say confidently that students can receive a high-quality education in nearly any setting, though their ability to graduate and pay their loans will differ.

International students (in front row) joined us for discussion.

We returned to the hotel around 6:00 pm and ate dinner together. Tomorrow will be our most hectic day yet with two campus visits and then an evening flight to Hyderabad. In case I don't have a chance to post the blog on Friday, we have some free time on Saturday and can catch up then.