College Degree vs. College Education ???

Donald Simanek, a physics teacher, presents some challenging ideas regarding collegiate education:

Even in the best of universities, some students get through with good academic records and still are not well-educated. They coasted through college without letting anything touch their minds. They didn't let academics interfere with their social life. We should not allow this to happen. It is a good thing for such students that most jobs that require a college degree do not require a college education. It's also a good thing that high intellectual ability isn't required for success and status, as anyone who has a boss knows.

What will the rest of the people do, those who can't earn a degree? The same things they do now with one. Most jobs that now require a college degree don't require a college education. The requirements of such jobs are easily met by trade schools or a year or two of community-college courses. For many employers a degree merely certifies that the person had four years to 'mature,' during which time he or she had to meet arbitrary standards, do unappealing and boring work, submit to authority without complaint, and not give up. That molds the sort of worker that business and industry like.

But there are a few modest steps we could take to improve education somewhat. Schools have become so cluttered with non-academic components that they have forgotten what ought to be their purpose.

The purpose of education is not merely to accumulate facts and information or job skills. Those are auxiliary functions. Facts and information and skills are necessary: they are the fodder for thinking. The purpose of developing the mind is to enable us to better acquire, evaluate and interpret information. But mere information, without thinking skills to evaluate and implement it, should not be worthy of academic credit. This suggestion is really quite radical. Even in the best universities, in the most 'academic' fields, evaluation systems give credit for memorized information.

I ask my academic colleagues this hard question. "In your exams, what percent of the points could be earned by a student who was merely a good memorizer of facts and procedures but understood nothing?" Few can honestly claim any less than 50%. I consider this to be the real scandal of education.

http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/decline1.htm

Engineers in Aprons, Anyone????

The following is an except from a post on Knowledge Jolt with Jack (one of my featured blogs in the right column).

A colleague forwarded How Companies Are Using IT To Spot Innovative Ideas by David Greenfield from InformationWeek's 10 November 2008 issue. It highlights how research organizations are adding prediction markets to their process of selecting new ventures to pursue.

The use of these collective decision-making technologies, both sophisticated prediction markets and simple voting tools, is spreading, and they're increasingly being paired together as a component of corporate innovation programs, helping companies sort through reams of ideas--from new products to customer service to productivity improvements--to find that handful of blockbusters.

But where do companies get those better ideas? That's the golden question. Based on everything I've seen and done, the surprising new ideas come from a combination of "the prepared mind" (expertise) and strange ideas that appear to come from left field -- the innovation-in-the-gaps concept.

Those familiar with my blog and/or faculty website know that one of my foci is that of software that enables collaboration, along with the passionate belief that the goal of every person no matter their "bucket capacity" (aka "intelligence") should be to become an "educated person." (See my apologia in the right-hand column of my faculty site).

I've commented before upon the future of the American economy being based upon our ability to innovate. And while we need to educate our young folks deeply in one discipline, this is yet another example of why we must also educated them broadly.

So please:

• K-12 programs should continue (or restart) music, art, field trips, etc.
• Colleges should continue to promote arts programs on campus--and instructors should motivate students to attend (a few point's bribe, perhaps???)
• Humanities instructors (e.g. Music & Art Appreciation) should be given plates of chocolate chip cookies by adoring engineering students

Educate broadly--the future of our economy and our nation depends upon it.

Ok, so maybe the cookie thing won't happen . . . . .

Educating "Joe the Plumber"

Since the last debate, "Joe the Plumber" has gotten some press; he has been rather impressive on television, answering questions and handling the media with poise. And I'm sure that there are some who are thinking

"not bad for a blue-collar worker . . . ."

But hold on there!!!!

Those of us lucky enough to have some "advanced degrees" are not the only persons thinking about, involved in, or affected by the upcoming election. And, neither are we the only "educated persons,"

From the System 13 blog:

When I hear the expression “educated person,” I immediately think of someone who has at least a bachelor’s degree (the more degrees, the better); they know what’s going on in the world and they keep abreast of politics; they read literature (whatever that may be); speaking a foreign language or two doesn’t hurt. When I look at my assessment of the expression “educated person” or, even more specifically, “well-educated person,” I now realize just how narrow-minded and arrogant my understanding of the expression is.

Certainly, the above describes a type of an “educated person.” But to say that, if someone doesn’t have a degree or they’re not up-to-speed on world politics, they’re not an educated person, is just being snooty, elitist. A good example of this snooty elitism is how I and many others view mechanics.

Mechanics have a rather dirty job. They get grease all over themselves; they lie on the ground an awful lot, poking around underneath our dirty vehicles. I’d say a huge number of people view everyday mechanics as “uneducated” or “poorly educated.” And sure, if you hold up a college education, being well read, etc. as meaning “well educated,” you’re right - many (but certainly not all) mechanics are “poorly educated.” However, this judgment starts to fall apart when you flip things around. From the mechanic’s point of view, perhaps the college-graduating, literature-reading people are the “uneducated” ones. Why, they’re not quite sure how to change the oil in their cars; they can’t figure out a basic engine problem, one that any mechanic would see within 15 minutes; hell, they don’t even know how much air is supposed to go in the tires of their vehicle!

Strictly speaking for myself, I need to stop equating educated with book-smart, which is a decent summation of my previous thinking. You can be illiterate and still be educated in some form or another; you can be extremely literate and not know how to do anything. I like to consider myself “educated,” and I couldn’t begin to tell you how to change the carburetor, in any vehicle - mine included.

In my teaching at Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology, many of my students are pursuing careers as mechanics, as well as plumbers, carpenters, and a variety of other skilled occupations. And certainly my colleagues there are striving to "educate" these students, and I am not minimizing those disciplines. But "training skills" is not "educating".

But when we strive to define an "educated person," we are (in computer terms) looking less at the content of the hard drive than we are in the quality of the processor. A savant may have a grasp of minutiae, yet still not be an "educated person." Surely Aristotole, Galileo, and Newton had no knowledge of many of our "modern" discoveries, yet few would argue that they were "uneducated."

To argue that knowing how to change a carburetor qualifies a person as being "educated" misses the point; certainly, an educated person should know the basics of combustion, but so also should an educated mechanic know that Tannhauser isn't a new German restaurant.

It is not elitist to suggest that different students come to school with different sized "buckets." The lucky ones, the "bright" ones come with the capacity to be filled with a plethora of skills, information, and thinking skills. Others have smaller buckets.

But to suggest that since a student comes with a "smaller bucket," we should limit that student to study of only one subject--failing to expose those students to the "wider world" is harmful not only to that student, but also to the entire economy.

Innovation comes from the ability to apply divergent points of view to old problems; if we continue to educate technicians only in the "tried and true" methods, then we limit the ability for those "doing" these processes from discovering new and "unconventional" methods.

My apologia continues to be the creation of "educated persons" within all of my students. To do anything less is to do them a disservice.