The Soul of Education: A Dialogue on Excellence and Human Flourishing
In the prevailing discourse on global education, we are increasingly confronted by a narrow, almost mechanical, definition of "excellence." In many parts of the world, and most acutely within the competitive landscape of India, higher education has been largely reduced to a transactional exercise. It is viewed as a high-stakes pipeline where the primary objective is to convert academic "inputs" into lucrative "career outcomes." When we speak of an excellent student, we are often merely referring to a high-performing asset in the labor market.
However, if we shift our gaze toward the Capability Approach, we must ask a more fundamental question: Is the purpose of the university simply to produce skilled technicians, or is it to expand the substantive freedoms of human beings to lead lives they have genuine reason to value? True development is not merely the growth of a nation’s Gross Domestic Product, but the expansion of the "capabilities" of its people, the real opportunities they have to be and to do what they find meaningful.
It was with this broader vision in mind that a dialogue recently took place at Vidyashilp University in Bangalore. Anuja Shenoy, Head of the Office of Global Initiatives, Vidyashilp University, sat down with Professor Martin van Hees, Dean, Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences (TSHD), Tilburg University, and Distinguished Visiting Professor, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Vidyashilp University. Professor van Hees is a scholar and a philosopher whose work at the vital intersection of philosophy, politics, and economics offers a necessary correction to the metrics of modern meritocracy.
Their conversation moves beyond the ledger of grades and placements. It explores the "teleological paradox" of success, the ethical duty of administrators to level the playing field of privilege, and the role of the Liberal Arts in fostering human flourishing. What follows is a reflection on how we might reconstruct the architecture of excellence to better serve the cause of human freedom.
Anuja Shenoy: So, I find your strain of studies really interesting. It’s all about freedom and integrity. And today, what we're gonna be talking about is excellence and education; how excellence is perceived in terms of education, its limitations, and probably what we can do to sort of change the perspective. Because right now, in India at least, education is mainly seen from the perspective of career outcomes rather than personal growth. So, my first question would be to you: how do you define excellence in education? Should it be about individual achievement, collective good, or something else entirely?
From my understanding, like in the Indian context, you're either an excellent person if you have good outcomes or you're good at something or if you're a good person in general. So I would like to ask you, what is your perspective on that?
Professor van Hees: I think it's a very important topic, especially when you think about how to arrange higher education. Roughly, and as you indicate, there are two different perspectives on excellence in higher education. One is the most familiar one, I think, which is in terms of accomplishments. You can talk about an excellent program in the sense that the program selects students who achieve high levels at high school, for instance, I would call that excellence at the entry level. So you make sure that the people who enter your program live up to certain standards.
Still, the first way—belonging to the first way of looking at it—is to say, well, we look at the output, so what the level is that they achieve at the end of the studies. And I would call it the input-output model of excellence. You can emphasize the input side, the entry level, or the output side, or a little bit of both. That’s one take, which is important. Don't get me wrong. I will not criticize it. I think it's an important take, but it does have its limitations.
The other one is going back to the original Greek understanding of excellence, which is about the process of growth. It's about being able to flourish, to exercise, and develop the talents that you have. So, then it's a much more dynamic process focused on what happens in between these inputs and outputs. And that I think myself is the more interesting, but also the more complicated way of looking at excellence. Because the criteria for it are not as clearly defined as they are for the perspective of either an entry or exit level. But I do think that second perspective also really deserves attention, and ideally, you would combine the different ways of looking at it.
Anuja Shenoy: Right. So, you know, we have students who are intrinsically very dynamic. And there are certain students who have it in them, but it's not visible right from the get-go. One great example I can think of is in the Harry Potter series. We have Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom. Both of them have sort of faced the same kind of traumatic experience. But their journeys are very different. Their personalities are very different. But ultimately, both of them are heroes. Using this example, what do you think the education system or a university can do to harness a student’s inherent quality rather than pushing them into something that might not be natural to them?
Professor van Hees: People are different. And any organization, and thus also universities, have to take account of those differences. But the interesting thing about the Harry Potter example is that what you see in the novels is that they both flourish in very different ways because of their different talents. They are different persons. But the idea of being able to develop your capacity to do the things which you are good at or to discover the things which you are good at—I mean, you don't know it always. And certainly when you're young, you may not know where your talents reside. So it's also a process of discovery. I think this idea of flourishing, of exercising your talents, of discovering your talents, and being able to develop them further, is the ideal that is being represented in the example of the Harry Potter novels. It is also something that we strive for in higher education: to try to make sure that people are indeed able to develop their talents and also partly to discover them.
Anuja Shenoy: But it must be such a difficult process, not just for the student, but for the teaching faculty and for the staff as well to understand, especially when there's so many students. We are a liberal arts university, so we have a smaller number of students. But what about bigger universities where the student-to-faculty ratio is much higher? What role does an educator play in this journey? And how can they gauge if a student is doing well and if they are meeting the societal expectations of excellence?
Professor van Hees: You're absolutely right. The different types of institutes really affect the extent to which you can give meaning to this ideal. Smaller universities like Vidyashilp University allow for more interaction. It's also the case, of course, that there are economic constraints. The ideal individual focus may be way too expensive to realize fully. It’s a bit of a balancing act. Education is about flourishing, but it's also about meeting requirements; making sure that we train the future doctors, the future accountants.
The importance is to keep these ideals at the forefront. It also depends on the discipline. In my discipline, in philosophy, I think it's very important that you train students doing philosophy and that is not done by only reading the big books. It’s about exchange, it’s about debate, it’s about communication. Now, I can imagine if you talk about a program in medicine, the emphasis on debate will be important, but maybe less so than with the philosophy program. So, there are also disciplinary differences which may affect the way you try to render this ideal of excellence in your teaching.
Anuja Shenoy: Do you think a multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary curriculum really helps the growth of students?
Professor van Hees: In general, I would say that interdisciplinary teaching built on clear disciplinary pillars is very fruitful for the students, for staff, and for society. For instance, I am working myself in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) and I am strongly convinced that for addressing the questions of our times, we need all three perspectives. PPE is one well-established example, in fact, so established that it is almost becoming its own subdiscipline. But there are many other fruitful interactions. Sometimes these concern very odd connections between disciplines that you really didn't think of beforehand, and then education can really be tremendously wonderful because you see people experiencing talents that they really didn't know that they have.
Anuja Shenoy: This reminds me of the Indian movie Three Idiots. One character is a genius who asks questions which are not welcome to professors, but he’s always the one who stands first. And what he always says is: "Don't worry about success. Just be curious. Just love what you're doing, success will come to you." In this world where success is the end rather than a means, what relevance do you think a constantly evolving notion of excellence provides?
Professor van Hees: I don’t think excellence is a fixed standard; it is person-dependent. There is a notion in philosophy which we refer to as the "teleological paradox." It states that sometimes, when you consciously, deliberately, and very intentionally strive for something, you may, for that very reason, not be very successful in that endeavor. Sometimes it’s better not to strive for it in order to realize it.
If you want to fall in love, don't "decide" to fall in love because that will not be happening. Just be. Similarly, with success in your studies, if you are motivated by an external motivation—being successful, having high grades—that's not the way to do it. The better way for success is to really get into it and try to own the material yourself, independent of whatever payoff it may have for you later.
Anuja Shenoy: I read somewhere that you should not "want it" so badly that if you don't get it, you deem yourself unsuccessful. You should be open to wherever life leads you.
Professor van Hees: If I'm not mistaken, there's this notion in Indian philosophy about striving via work, but doing so without attachment. Karma Yoga, I believe it's called. That's a very nice way of looking at this; it's related to the teleological paradox.
Anuja Shenoy: How do you think freedom and excellence intersect in an educational context? Specifically, within a liberal arts education?
Professor van Hees: A broad introduction allows students to discover connections. Regarding freedom, I do think some constraints can actually enhance a person’s freedom. For example, requiring a certain number of credits outside of your specialization forces students to think outside of the familiar. That combination of constraint and freedom is a very good approach. We might also say that societal developments require students to learn skills that aren't a "natural" part of a curriculum. For instance, with AI, we want future policymakers to not only reflect upon technological changes, but also be able to understand the mechanisms of them.
Anuja Shenoy: I like that idea of freedom with constraints. If we look at Isaiah Berlin’s two concepts of freedom—negative and positive freedom—how does this apply to students from different backgrounds? One student comes from privilege; another comes with a scholarship and must maintain a certain CGPA.
Professor van Hees: There is definitely an inequality there. We try to deal with this by looking at more than just high school grades at the entry level. We must look at the specific circumstances and the context in which those grades were obtained. That is a way of ensuring that limitations are reduced, which could be formulated in terms of negative freedom.
In terms of positive freedom, which refers to having the actual ability and the means and the opportunity to do something, it is true that some students have more means. It is the responsibility of administrators to take account of these specific circumstances through scholarship systems and a holistic analysis of the situation of the student.
Anuja Shenoy: Going back to Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy is backed by the system because of his privilege, whereas Hermione Granger, though accomplished, faces discrimination.
Professor van Hees: You're right. By the way, I found the little effect that the upbringing of Harry Potter had in his later endeavours to be quite implausible. If you would have been raised in such an awful way, then one may expect it to have a much bigger impact, Regarding Draco, I would be hesitant to make the parallel too strong by saying that having opportunity automatically places you on the right or wrong side.
Anuja Shenoy: Finally, what is your perspective on self-directed learning and asynchronous lectures versus the community of a classroom?
Professor van Hees: I think I like it when people learn new stuff. If it’s self-directed learning, then I think that's interesting. But if it's going to be "either this or that," then I start getting slightly worried. Class dynamics and the way people interact with each other are also part of the learning process. Going to university is a privilege; to spend three or four years at a special place together with peers is wonderful. Self-directed learning can play a big role in later life, but the classroom experience is something that I really think is important.
This dialogue between Anuja Shenoy and Professor Martin van Hees serves as a vital reminder that the "Wealth of Nations" is not to be found in its treasuries or its corporate boardrooms, but in the developed capabilities of its people. When a university like Vidyashilp does not use a rigid "input-output" model but a model of human flourishing, it acknowledges that education is not a race to be won, but a freedom to be realized. By valuing the "in-between", we ensure that every individual, regardless of the hand they were dealt, has the opportunity to lead a life of dignity and purpose.