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I think there needs to be acknowledgement that there are two different learning tracks in higher education - one that is facts & figures, and one that is experi

I think there needs to be acknowledgement that there are two different learning tracks in higher education - one that is facts & figures, and one that is experiential. For better or worse, most institutions treat success in facts & figures as a high quality proxy indicating future success in the experiential areas, which includes everything from how an individual knows how to learn & how to teach themselves, to how they effectively build relationships and collaborate with others. Speaking as someone both liberal arts & technical degrees, and technical & business leadership experience over 20 years in manufacturing & big tech, my assessment is that this is ridiculous. Of course there will always be a need for "human computers" -- people who specialize in functions requiring programmatic, fact-based work -- but most jobs are not like this, and most individuals who prefer this type of work would generally benefit from expanding their comfort and capacity in human-centric skills. To this end, I agree vigorously that the current state of higher education is both unsustainable and insane, but I think the end game will be more private enterprise & public sector employers deciding to expand intern & apprenticeship programs as an alternative to being constrained in hiring to the pipeline of candidates emerging from top universities. We'll see.

Fogest 5y ago
I agree, I think University in it's current form has been more about being able to efficiently cram as many students into programs as possible and keep pumping out the degrees. The goal no longer seems to be too focused on the education itself. I so often am seeing my local universities take people by the boatload in areas that have very little jobs. 100's will graduate with degrees that barely help them and have almost no jobs available to them. What they were taught is so fact/figure based that there is little practical skills they can apply to real life. So many people I find will go and take courses at the local colleges after to make themselves actually hirable. In Canada I believe our "colleges" are equivalent to community colleges/trade schools in America just for context. I did a minor in psychology and so many classmates went into things like a 2 year program in HR administration at the local college. Because their degree simply led nowhere. Unless they wanted to continue and get into some highly competitive masters programs there was little in the career prospects. And then I find Universities in general have been suffering from a lot of admin bloat. I got off on a bit of a tangent here, but overall I think Universities have been ending up going in the wrong direction. Online learning has made the problem of raw memorization for testing purposes an even more prevalent issue. And instead choosing to test using different/better methods, educational institutions would rather opt to keep using raw memorization while adding privacy invasive programs to monitor students.

Fogest 5y ago

I agree, I think University in it's current form has been more about being able to efficiently cram as many students into programs as possible and keep pumping out the degrees. The goal no longer seems to be too focused on the education itself. I so often am seeing my local universities take people by the boatload in areas that have very little jobs. 100's will graduate with degrees that barely help them and have almost no jobs available to them. What they were taught is so fact/figure based that there is little practical skills they can apply to real life. So many people I find will go and take courses at the local colleges after to make themselves actually hirable. In Canada I believe our "colleges" are equivalent to community colleges/trade schools in America just for context. I did a minor in psychology and so many classmates went into things like a 2 year program in HR administration at the local college. Because their degree simply led nowhere. Unless they wanted to continue and get into some highly competitive masters programs there was little in the career prospects. And then I find Universities in general have been suffering from a lot of admin bloat. I got off on a bit of a tangent here, but overall I think Universities have been ending up going in the wrong direction. Online learning has made the problem of raw memorization for testing purposes an even more prevalent issue. And instead choosing to test using different/better methods, educational institutions would rather opt to keep using raw memorization while adding privacy invasive programs to monitor students.