I have a phd student that does not want to go into academics. The department is not making it easy to get outside/industry experience.
The university does have a consulting group of grad students. That has been very useful for getting exposed to industries and developing project management skills
There are two separate issues in this thread, that have become merged in this thread but need not be.
One is the sad new practice of hiring more adjuncts vs. tenure track professors.
The other seems to be a question of whether learning the humanities is valuable at all! I disagree adamantly that the goal of college should be specific vocational training. I think that a liberal arts education develops skills of reasoning, critical thinking, and writing that are applicable to ANY field. Philosophy, history, anthropology, etc. majors go on to lucrative careers in law, medicine, investment banking, consulting, finance, management, etc.-- not just to professorships (although I hope there will always be great new professors). I certainly saw that at Williams, where I went to college; people’s majors often provided very little clue as to what their eventual careers ended up being.
We can’t even know what the jobs of the future will be! The world changes, but the need to be able to think does not. Hence, learning to think is more transferable than learning a trade.
I may add that, as someone who does a lot of hiring in the field of public elementary education, I sometimes find the most interesting candidates to be people who pursued an unrelated major as an undergraduate (history, psychology, English, etc.) and picked up their educational credentials later.
College can be four magical years to live in a ivory tower, immersed in the life of the mind, with professors and peers who share your love of ideas.
That’s what I want for my son, now a high school junior. There are plenty of careers out there, and he will figure out what he wants to do. But, right now, I want to give him the gift of going to college and learning to think deeply… of staying up late with friends debating theories… of surrounding himself for four years with those who love learning, and thinking, as much as he does. I believe that this background will help make him a wise and happy human being who someday will be able to contribute wonderfully to a career, a field of knowledge, a family, and society.
Good high schools can be four magical years to live in a ivory tower, immersed in the life of the mind, with teachers with PhDs and peers who share your love of ideas.
Thinking deeply, staying up late with friends debating theories (at residential high schools), surrounding yourself for four years with those who love learning and thinking as much as you do can all take place in HS.
I personally don’t think that it should be either/or. Considering that our brains and judgment do not reach full maturity until 30, the whole time from 16-30 ideally should be a mixture of vocational training, working, and liberal arts study. In fact, some literature and courses really should be tackled only around 30 or later or after working and living for a bit.
BTW, the life of the mind is terrific. I loved being immersed in it with no responsibilities, but the life of reality can often teach as much or more.
This topic of discussion comes up frequently on CC, and the opinion is always influenced by the posters POV. If I remember correctly, @GoNoles85 is an instructor at a community college. As such, he/she is used to dealing with students who likely were not successful enough in high school to get into a four year university.
@TheGreyKing attended Williams, which is one of the most selective schools in the country. It is an entirely different student base, with entirely different job prospects from 95 percent of all college graduates. While a Williams type student might very well benefit from a traditional liberal arts education, that benefit may not exist for a student at the community college level.
People are, indeed, extremely influenced by their own background.
Many distinctions are fairly artificial. Read Pepys, go back to his time, and there was intellectual ferment in coffeehouses and teahouses with tracts and pamphlets being published and discussed. Sermons advanced ideas and were seen as entertainment. Later on, various salons were hosted. Were they not receiving a liberal arts education? Yet practical inventions like insurance underwriting (Lloyd’s of London) also came from there.
CS is practical, yet as much a liberal art as math. Engineering is not typically seen as a liberal art, but it does teach some powerful mental models and tools with which you can tackle the world.
Meanwhile, go back far enough and the liberal arts were vocational, being training for the clergy.
And correct me if I am wrong, but there was also a time when apprenticeships were the normal way to bring young people into adulthood so if your dad was a mason you would probably be a mason and if you dad was a fisherman you would probably have the option to walk down that path or set out on your own which sounds perilous. The university model sort of came about to give the elite land owner set a chance to learn more than whatever one’s father did. I also agree with your point that many disciplines merge technical training and liberal arts thinking. Even my field, accounting, which includes taxation, relies heavily on one’s ability to research and come to a conclusion considering the facts and circumstances and then being able to communicate your conclusions to others. That is more so true beyond the basic level which can be rote.
You have a good memory. The only thing I would add to your point about how the students I serve might benefit more from a practical, vocational based education compared to the students of places like Williams is that not all of the folks in my classes or at my college are there because they were locked out of entering a 4-year university as freshman. Many of them, perhaps more than one might realize, choose to start at a CC and TF later although I do have my fair share of students who not only do not have basic skills, God only knows what happens in high school, but also do not know how to study and compound that by being apathetic. You show me a classroom teacher and I am pretty sure that what I just said sounds familiar. It wasn’t that long ago that one long thread here at CC included the lament about some of those private school students who didn’t write well so the school had to take this and that measure to try to fix it.
But your main point is right on the money. The debate about LA educations comes up here often and the battle lines are usually drawn pretty quickly and people line up based on their own personal experiences. I swear I try to be open minded. I realize that my path in life isn’t necessarily the right one especially for others. One great thing about being a parent is one has to revisit all these issues and decisions once again. It always feels like rolling dice to me. They say never trust a guy who carries his own stick in a billiards game and never completely trust advice you get from others. You have to solve the problem(s) yourself based on the best data you can get.
@TheGreyKing loved your post in #21. You make a number of good points and certainly, like you said, humanities majors go on to lucrative careers later in the traditional professions. I think in some cases they joke later about all the “other stuff” they learned before they got to the stuff they needed. That might be one of those jokes that has some truth in it. I think the world is changing though and I’m hoping the education model we use changes with it. It is true I deal with students on a daily basis who seem to have gotten zip out of high school and we have to remediate them and get them ready for upper division classes and careers or else. They will not have a fighting chance if we don’t although college isn’t the answer for everyone. You could be a plumber, right? If we don’t get the vocational stuff many of these students would have 14 or 15 years of education with very little to show for it and that serves no one. There is a balancing act going on between LA, Gen Ed and vocational skills.
I think the catalyst that will change education, if it ever happens, will be when you can enter your chosen career field by self-studying and then passing some sort of external, unified, proctored exam (like the CPA exam). I think that will not only motivate students but burst the debt bubble around financing education. It will almost certainly be aided by students picking what they want to study, by extension, such as the UCLA Screenwriters Extension program, and then having the student purchase self-study materials and tutoring as needed. Many faculty are already “guides on the side” as it is.
With lectures and so much information online now, the only value that college provides now are seminars, study skill improvement resources, labs, and possibly intellectual (and other) ferment outside the classroom though those could be gotten other ways as well.
I agree with TheGreyKing. If some students have the love of learning for learning’s sake and are in the enviable position of having the opportunity to do it- then go for it. Live it and love it. If some want to go to a big State U, enjoy the greek life and sports games, then go for it! Live it and love it. If some want to attend trade school to learn a skilled trade, go for it. Live it and love it. College may not be necessary. There are also those opportunities to come out of a 4 year school with a more easily employable/marketable skill (technical/CS/engineering degrees, business/accounting/finance degrees, maybe criminal justice, forensic science, etc). Those are great degrees, but so can be degrees in math, history and philosophy. Who knows what the job market will be like in a few years. Why not find a way to combine bliss with the development of practical skill sets.
Most states in the US have educational requirements for CPA licensing, in addition to passing the CPA exam:
https://www.aicpa.org/BecomeACPA/Licensure/Requirements/Pages/default.aspx
Perhaps the main issue is a simple economic one – there are far more applicants compared to the number of (desirable) jobs available, so the barrier to entry is very high. Obviously, incumbent employees in those scarce jobs want to protect their own jobs using various methods (e.g. tenure for college faculty; licensing requirements for accountants, physicians, lawyers, etc.; taxi medallions). Yes, licensing requirements are used to assure the general public of some minimum standard of quality, but that does not preclude them from being used to raise barriers to entry against new entrants, even those who are well qualified.
College also provides a structure for a student to follow if s/he would not otherwise be one to learn a coherent and useful set of knowledge and skills on his/her own, and also provides the credential of a degree that is increasingly used as an initial screen by employers (even for jobs where the knowledge or skill indicated by holding the degree is not needed).
@ucbalumnus: I put the first under “study skill improvement resources” (I would include TA sessions there a too) and I wasn’t more clear: I meant physical colleges (as opposed to online/distance ones). If not for what I listed, licensing could come via those.
I can’t wait to have my medical care provided by someone who self-studied their way through a medical education.
I’ll include labs, as well.
@WesmoreDad: The whole medical licensing process involves a ton of experiential learning with internships and residencies. Any doctor you went to certainly didn’t become a good one from orgo lectures (or even anatomy lectures).