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METHOD:PUBLISH
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20160513T101756Z
DTSTART:20160518T130000Z
DTEND:20160518T140000Z
SUMMARY:Importing the liberal arts to England: differentiation and elitis
 m in a marketised HE system
UID:{http://www.columbasystems.com/customers/uom/gpp/eventid/}b43-io5klxp
 d-idpd10
DESCRIPTION:The current higher education policy landscape is characterise
 d by an increasing focus on employability\, and in such a context it is 
 particularly difficult for HEIs to make a case for the humanities discip
 lines\, traditionally conceived. In their focus on ‘education for its ow
 n sake’ and the pursuit of intellectual curiosity – in short their decid
 edly non-vocational focus – the humanities appear quite out of step with
  the prevailing policy mood. This paper will focus on the emergence of o
 ne strategy for negotiating the current higher education landscape in En
 gland: the interdisciplinary (but generally humanities-based) liberal ar
 ts degree. Fourteen English HEIs (spanning the Russell Group\, Million+\
 , GuildHE and the former 1994 Group) now offer liberal arts degrees\, wi
 th three further institutions planning new courses to begin in 2016.\n\n
 Through an analysis of the promotional websites of all seventeen HEIs ad
 vertising liberal arts degrees\, the paper will examine similarities and
  differences in the ways that more and less prestigious HEIs conceptuali
 se the liberal arts degree and its prospective students. In particular\,
  I will focus on a set of tensions which must be managed by HEIs if they
  are to promote these degrees as coherent: that between educational trad
 ition and innovation\; between the non-vocational and a drive toward emp
 loyability\; between the generic nature of the skills to be imparted and
  the ‘uniqueness’ of the degrees and their students\; and between a (som
 etimes hyperbolic) concept of liberal arts as preparing students to be g
 lobal citizens\, as against a highly individualised idea of preparing se
 lect students for leadership.\n\nThroughout their negotiations of these 
 tensions\, it is older\, elite HEIs which particularly press for a sense
  of their liberal arts students as uniquely talented individuals who wil
 l come to take on leadership roles. In this highly individualised accoun
 t an elite conception of humanities education easily re-emerges. Through
  some historical comparison with mid-twentieth century attempts to reinv
 igorate liberal arts provision in the US through a purported return to t
 he ‘Great Books of the Western World’\, I argue that\, while in complex 
 negotiation with notions of democracy and citizenship\, the liberal arts
  idea can be used to differentiate an elite form of education\, and an e
 lite group of students\, within a mass HE system.
STATUS:TENTATIVE
TRANSP:TRANSPARENT
CLASS:PUBLIC
LOCATION:Board room (second floor)\, Arthur Lewis Building\, Manchester
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