Ashoka University Workshop

"The basic purpose of a liberal arts' education is to liberate the human being to exercise his or her potential to the fullest."

Ashoka University, located in Sonepat, is an institution that offers students courses in the liberal arts. It emphasises a multidisciplinary approach. This approach offers depth and breadth to learning as it exposes students to a diverse range of disciplines. The aim is to enable the child to grow into a more holistic individual. Besides this, the student exercises his choice as he is encouraged to select a combination of subjects that are of interest to him and he may wish to pursue later.

On 28th October 2015, Ashoka University organised a workshop for students of our School on our premises. The workshop was headed by led by Pratikshya Paramita, Outreach Manager at Ashoka University. She spoke to us about liberal arts' education and how it was emerging as the next big thing, as it were, in many countries, including India. She highlighted the names of people such as Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg amongst others, who benefitted from such an education.

Ms. Paramita informed us that Ashoka University aims not only at offering students a 360 degree view of the world, but also abundant extra-curricular activities through the year. Something that Ashoka University has to offer, which by far is distinct and new, is the " Start-up Weekend". Every year, Ashoka University has organises these, where students are encouraged to showcase their ideas for start-ups. If the founders find that an idea has prospects, then they even recommend considering to fund it.

The workshop concluded with Ms. Pratikshya Paramita responding to our queries. She reiterated that her university believes that no student should be deprived of quality education especially for reasons of financial constraints. They qre even willing to offer scholarships covering starting 20- 100 percent costs. In fact from among the current batch of 247 students, 133 are either on part or full scholarship.

Undoubtedly, the prospects sounded exciting and the we felt enthused about considering this option as we come to the end of our School lives.

Enakshi Dasgupta, XII- C.