In recent years, there is an issue in Indonesian academic to apply the Liberal Arts Education method in universities. This idea comes among the lot of criticisms toward the national education system. Some people say that our current curriculum or system does not build the students to be well-rounded person. School or college are considered just teaching one major, and forces the student to become experts in that place without mastering the other things. Also, they believe that students can not only take a number of classes which are directly related to the student’s career goal. They argue that Students should also study other lectures outside the major. It’s aimed to create students who are able to do multitasking job, so they will always be ready whatever the field is. The Rector of Universitas Indonesia, Prof. Gumilar Rusliwa Somantri, also has an interest on the Liberal Arts method. Just after the inauguration of being the rector of Universitas Indonesia, he stated his intention to apply the method in the university. However, we also need to consider the objective of Liberal Art Education with the demand of the global world toward the skillful workers nowadays. This essay will discuss whether the Liberal Arts education is still relevant to be applied in Universitas Indonesia as the first class university in Indonesia by considering the job competition, educational fund, and the human resources availability.

It has been argued that liberal arts college give the well-rounded education to the students. In an article titled “What is a Liberal Arts College” , students are supposed to take a number of classes which not related to their career goal directly. They have the freedom to choose what class or lecture that they want to learn without any major restriction frame. As the original principle, liberal arts education was taught only to the free men in ancient Greek era. The subjects included Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, music, astronomy, arithmetic, and geometry. Students are supposed to learn all of the 7 subjects in order to give the comprehensive and well-rounded education.

In reality, this kind of method is ineffective to create the students skillful in at least one field of expertise. For instance, a student who study at faculty of engineering and take his major in shipping technique, is it needed for him to take others major such as philosophy according to his career goal as a shipping engineer? It is just a wasting time activity by taking some courses that you’ll never use it later on.

Moreover, if a student takes a lot of classes which are not related to his educational purpose, it will only make him difficult in focusing to his goal. Each class has its own standard and assignment. To get the good result at class, student needs to follow the class and finish all the assignment. Could you imagine how do they concentrate and master all of those subjects? Certainly, no body’s perfect in this world. Each person has its own excess and weakness. Student must focus on the excess and optimize the potential, rather to spend the time in surmounting the weakness. At the result, it just brings the student to not mastering his major as deep as possible.

Still in the article titled “What is a Liberal Arts College” , people who agree in this method also consider that liberal arts method is not needed to provide any job training or professional programs. They believe that in 4 – 5 years education is not the time to gaining the work experience. It can be obtained at the grad school, internships, or in the work place. In Liberal Arts College, students are taught to thinking critically and understanding something more comprehensively. It is such a good thing that student earns from a liberal arts college indeed. On the contrary, the inexperienced fresh graduate workers are not needed by many companies. Companies just need the prepared workers that can do a certain job instantly. What they expect are the skillful workers which are produced by the college or university.

Also, companies do not wish for training them to be able in doing certain job. This thing is ineffective and unproductive to the company. Beside train a group of fresh graduate workers to do certain job, company prefer to recruit the prepared and skillful workers. This tendency can be understood by reflecting on the excess of working forces in job market. Therefore, this condition would reduce the job opportunity to unskillful graduates which are not received any job training in liberal arts college.

Back to the case of whether the liberal arts method should apply in Universitas Indonesia. The only question is, will the new method give any advantages and also improve the quality of Universitas Indonesia? There are two main considerations that we must think about.

The most important fact is that Liberal Arts College does not give enough funds to the institution’s finance. In this method, college just accepts a small number of students. Class becomes smaller in order to offer the more personalized learning experience to the students . If his method applied to Universitas Indonesia, it will decrease the number of annual student capacity which is about 5000 every year . Indeed, the reducing of student capacity will effect to the university income that come from education fee. Perhaps, one of the solutions if Universitas Indonesia turns to Liberal Arts College is by increasing the education fee. Nevertheless, it is not such a wise policy according to the Indonesian poor economy condition and the great number of student who want to enter Universitas Indonesia.

Furthermore, a liberal arts college also does lower number of research than a university. Most of the university professors tend to do some research. From the research activity, university can gain more income from the government’s grants. In 2009, through the Department of National Education, government has offered 50 million rupiahs for each researcher . The research fund itself will return to the university with the aim of improving the academic facilities. Therefore, university has the better funding which comes from many sources.

The other arguments are about the readiness of Universitas Indonesia in applying the liberal arts method especially in the availability of human resources. In Liberal Arts College, the ideal ratio between lecturer and student is 1: 10. The class is definitely smaller than the university that has ratio between 1: 20 and 1: 30. This gap means if Universitas Indonesia wants to be Liberal Arts College, they must increase the number of lectures. It is not such an easy matter for Universitas Indonesia. Nowadays, in some faculties, the ratio between student and lecturer is not balance. There are often some big classes that consist of more than 40 pupils.

Moreover, most of the lecturer is still a graduate student. They teach in front of the class as the professor’s assistant. In the fact, the teaching portion sometimes is bigger than the professor itself. The professor tends to appear only at the beginning of the semester, and the lecture will be conducted by the assistant afterward. Ideally, in Liberal Arts College, the professors do not use any assistant in teaching the undergraduate students. They teach and guide their class directly. Liberal arts method believes that is very important to build the way of thinking of the students while the undergraduate programs. Consequently, it is quite difficult for Universitas Indonesia to apply the liberal arts method.

In conclusion, Universitas Indonesia is not ready to apply the liberal arts method in the curriculum. The student’s high demand toward Universitas Indonesia and also the lack of teaching human resources are the two reasons why that method is not suitable in recent time. Moreover, this kind of method is also no longer relevant regarding to the globalization era. Market needs the skillful workers which are able to do certain job instantly. There’s no time for company to train the inexperienced workers which is only wasting time and money. I believe the curriculum occurs today is already suitable to recent condition. It build students expert in one major that can be use immediately after the graduation.