U-of-L Liberal Education Dean Shelley Wismatch - LNN

By Connor Gunn

Liberal Education Dean offers perspective on the approach in post-secondary institutions

Feb 6, 2020 | 3:11 PM

LETHBRIDGE, AB- Dean Shelly Wismath from the University of Lethbridge’s Liberal Education department offered her thoughts on what Alberta universities have done with the liberal concept.

“The Liberal Education approach is, specifically speaking, about students being able to find what empowers them to focus on that career-wise.”

Wismath says Canadian universities have been adopting that idea when offering many required courses for some of its programs to ensure students get a wider learning scope.

Other institutions, such as SAIT or Lethbridge College, don’t have the liberal approach – meaning they do not require you to take additional courses that you may not need for a specific course of study.

As Wismath says, “The whole idea has its ups and downs, knowing that many people will not want to take extracurricular courses.”

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“The job market is changing so much, that half the jobs people will be doing in ten years don’t exist yet, and a lot of the jobs that people are training for will disappear.”

“Criticisms are often that it is not job oriented enough, so for people who are willing to have government subsidize education it’s pretty clear that we’re going to need doctors and dentists, teachers and engineers, it’s just not that it’s (liberal education) required.”

Wismath adds that the approach centres around many different focuses.

“Problem solving, communication, analysis of information, all those skills, that’s really what the jobs of the future are going to need.”

Wismath believes that to have the jobs in our society adopt this idea, schools will have to teach it.