Looking back on my education 20 years later... obviously the math degree gave me the skill set to take advantage of the opportunities handed to me. (It’s how I got back into grad school & out with a PhD in just 4 years; it let me work with Mike Abrash.) but the skills I learned in school that have helped me as a person were from the courses that weren’t “certificatable”: literary analysis, my beloved history, the philosophy I always hated.
I worry in a certificate-driven education that we’ll leave those things behind.
On the other hand, the person I know with the best grasp of history, philosophy, and literary analysis barely graduated from high school and did a 4 year stint in the Navy: apparently, being stuck on a ship for years gives you ample opportunity for self-study. Maybe what we need is just boredom, opportunity, & books, and not more schooling?
I graduated an engineering program at a pretty decent school a few years ago.
My school was quite explicit about the idea that they were trying for an occupational approach to education. We were there to become engineers, if there was any hint of the qualifier “well-rounded”, it was mostly lip service: compelled writing courses (albeit with great professors), a ridiculously superficial ethics course, and a credit system that strongly discouraged taking courses from non-engineering colleges (some of our sister colleges in the university offered world class liberal arts courses, peers, and professors).
In my writing courses, there was a popular sentiment (unintelligible to me) to rebel against doing any work for the class. A student said, in class, “I’m studying to be an X Engineer, I shouldn’t be here.” I managed to take a few humanities courses outside of the engineering college, to count towards these requirements, and (along with random books at the library) they easily provided the most mind-expanding material I encountered in college.
I totally agree with you, that certificate-oriented degrees have a tendency to drop the important lessons of exercising the “muscle of thought”. In my opinion it’s a big loss: my life today would certainly not be as rich without those lessons, earned outside “my field”. But, we have to reckon with the reality that many students not interested in these “extra” features, for better or for worse. There’s a real demand for rote education, even if its cash value is lesser, which we suspect it to be.
Yeah, the #1 thing I got out of college was critical thinking. History and philosophy are where I learned that. Would it have come without college? Maybe, and certainly yes for some. I do worry about a learn-one-task education system and what that means for society at large.
With the degree attainment rate at only 30% in the US, a share that is similar in many countries around the world, the "learn-one-task education system" is what society at large is already accustomed to.
Is this an argument against my concern? I can't tell. I think poor education is a major issue in our (world) society and makes people more vulnerable to things like disinformation which is rampant today.
I would say that you have to make sure that there is no real barrier first:
Bring Education online.
THEN the university and learning spaces have the chance of providing whatever 'Education online' can't provide.
That would free up and actually make it possible to evolve education.
If everyone is listing to the same lecture every year again without improvement, we miss out but also having to do the same lecture every year, costs ressources. Optimize your lecture instead of reduing the whole lecture every year.
I worry in a certificate-driven education that we’ll leave those things behind.
On the other hand, the person I know with the best grasp of history, philosophy, and literary analysis barely graduated from high school and did a 4 year stint in the Navy: apparently, being stuck on a ship for years gives you ample opportunity for self-study. Maybe what we need is just boredom, opportunity, & books, and not more schooling?