It would make more sense to have people simply put more emphasis on technical writing courses and care less about degrees. Technical writing courses that would be applicable to every field already exist. A four year program, where these same skills are learned tangentially, is a total waste of resources.
See, I totally disagree with your last point.
The modern economy requires flexibility. Many young people entering the work force now will have 3 to 5 different careers. Note, I didn't say jobs, but entirely different careers. I myself am already on my 3rd one and I'm not yet 40. University education creates people who are very well-rounded and can adapt to a changing market place. When one job goes away due to automation, they can transfer their variety of skills and knowledge to other fields and still be successful with a small amount of additional training.
You are advocating for industry-specific, or even job-specific, training and education, which is great for that one job or industry, but what happens when the economy shifts and you only have one very specific set of skills? You will struggle to find work, or the work you get will be very low skill and low paying.
Basically you end up as Michael Scott when he quits his job as the manager of a paper company. What does he do next for work? He starts his own paper company, mostly because he doesn't know how to do anything else.
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Originally Posted by ResAlien
If we can't fall in love with replaceable bottom 6 players then the terrorists have won.
The modern economy requires flexibility. Many young people entering the work force now will have 3 to 5 different careers. Note, I didn't say jobs, but entirely different careers. I myself am already on my 3rd one and I'm not yet 40. University education creates people who are very well-rounded and can adapt to a changing market place. When one job goes away due to automation, they can transfer their variety of skills and knowledge to other fields and still be successful with a small amount of additional training.
You are advocating for industry-specific, or even job-specific, training and education, which is great for that one job or industry, but what happens when the economy shifts and you only have one very specific set of skills? You will struggle to find work, or the work you get will be very low skill and low paying.
Basically you end up as Michael Scott when he quits his job as the manager of a paper company. What does he do next for work? He starts his own paper company, mostly because he doesn't know how to do anything else.
I sure wish I took whatever you took because I didn't learn #### all in my four years of undergrad.
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I sure wish I took whatever you took because I didn't learn #### all in my four years of undergrad.
Unless you mean shotgunning beer.
Isn't it like anything in life, though? By and large, you get out of it what you put into it. I learned tons, but I studied like a mofo. Mostly because good grades don't come easy for me, so I have/had to.
The modern economy requires flexibility. Many young people entering the work force now will have 3 to 5 different careers. Note, I didn't say jobs, but entirely different careers. I myself am already on my 3rd one and I'm not yet 40. University education creates people who are very well-rounded and can adapt to a changing market place. When one job goes away due to automation, they can transfer their variety of skills and knowledge to other fields and still be successful with a small amount of additional training.
You are advocating for industry-specific, or even job-specific, training and education, which is great for that one job or industry, but what happens when the economy shifts and you only have one very specific set of skills? You will struggle to find work, or the work you get will be very low skill and low paying.
Basically you end up as Michael Scott when he quits his job as the manager of a paper company. What does he do next for work? He starts his own paper company, mostly because he doesn't know how to do anything else.
You can't honestly believe that having a 4 year liberal arts degree gives you superior experience than actually working? There are plenty of industries that cross over. Things like writing skills, which can be industry specific, can also cross over between industries. In fact many skills can.
For example, in my legal career I use the should I learned from my part time retail job at Telus all the time. I worked this job during my third year of law school, and use the information and skills I learned there far more than anything I learned in my third year of law school.
University also doesn't necessarily create well rounded people. Many of the people from various programs end up as carbon copies of each other with little to no actual life experience.
In the age of the internet and free and accessible knowledge, University isn't what it used to be.
You can't honestly believe that having a 4 year liberal arts degree gives you superior experience than actually working? There are plenty of industries that cross over. Things like writing skills, which can be industry specific, can also cross over between industries. In fact many skills can.
For example, in my legal career I use the should I learned from my part time retail job at Telus all the time. I worked this job during my third year of law school, and use the information and skills I learned there far more than anything I learned in my third year of law school.
University also doesn't necessarily create well rounded people. Many of the people from various programs end up as carbon copies of each other with little to no actual life experience.
In the age of the internet and free and accessible knowledge, University isn't what it used to be.
You get what you pay for. If it's free, it's likely very low value. There is a reason university libraries pay for access to peer-reviewed journals. They are of high value, so there is a cost associated with that information.
I certainly do not agree that free internet knowledge is the same thing as carefully cultivated curricula from scholars that have experience in that field.
To your other points: Sure, experience of ANY kind is valuable, so of course you can learn some things from the workplace. I did myself before I ever went back to school, so I have to concede that point. It doesn't make education NOT valuable.
I don't understand your third paragraph. It seems like a bit of a non-sequitur. Obviously, it depends on the school and the kind of courses one takes, but generally speaking, universities give a more balanced education than a trade school does. That's all I'm saying.
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If we can't fall in love with replaceable bottom 6 players then the terrorists have won.
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You get what you pay for. If it's free, it's likely very low value. There is a reason university libraries pay for access to peer-reviewed journals. They are of high value, so there is a cost associated with that information.
I certainly do not agree that free internet knowledge is the same thing as carefully cultivated curricula from scholars that have experience in that field.
To your other points: Sure, experience of ANY kind is valuable, so of course you can learn some things from the workplace. I did myself before I ever went back to school, so I have to concede that point. It doesn't make education NOT valuable.
I don't understand your third paragraph. It seems like a bit of a non-sequitur. Obviously, it depends on the school and the kind of courses one takes, but generally speaking, universities give a more balanced education than a trade school does. That's all I'm saying.
My point is more that if you want to learn about, for example, the history of the Netherlands prior to WWI, there is a much more expansive amount of knowledge readily available for free, than what you would have gotten out of a random history course in the 1990s.
I do agree that certain skills and knowledge are best learned in a school environment. However, students would be better off with focused and compressed course work. University degrees most certainly do not consist of a "carefully cultivated curricula from scholars". They are a hodgepodge of random profs and materials that force students to take useless courses to earn enough credits to graduate. My basic point is that university programs are not, in their current form, carefully cultivated in any way. Once again, a more focused and compressed program, similar to a trade school, would be much better at accomplishing that goal.
As previously stated, the current system just acts as a character test and shows prospective employers that students are willing to stick out 4 years of boredom and memorization.
The failure rates, in most programs (with notable exceptions like engineering), are so low that entry level courses, that at one time served as a way to weed out poor students, don't even do that anymore.
The North American educational system needs a complete overhaul, and we should be looking to far superior systems, like those in Nordic countries and Germany. Key points being that: unsuccessful students are put into less academically demanding and more trade focused programs earlier; the government controls how many spots are available in each field of study, and the number of spots are in relation to actual job demands; education is cheaper, which is accomplished via overall efficiency in the system, not higher taxes and expenses; programs are more focused and employment related; and failure rates are higher.
In North America, university is more of a business based on getting as many students through the door as possible and getting them to buy as many books as they can. Whether it is intended that way is irrelevant, as that is certainly what it has become. The Canadian taxpayer gets the added bonus of having to pay for the vast majority of some kind of 4 year post-adolescent summer camp. Meanwhile, we are forced to import large amounts of skilled labourers and technicians from Europe and Asia.
Edit: I appreciate what you are trying to do with your writing intensive school. However, the fact your school exists says a lot about the failures in our current system. If students aren't learning basic writing skills in a standard 4 year university program - so much so that they would need to rely on a privately funded liberal arts school to get basic writing skills - something is wrong.
Basically you end up as Michael Scott when he quits his job as the manager of a paper company. What does he do next for work? He starts his own paper company, mostly because he doesn't know how to do anything else.
You do know that Michael Scott was a fictional person, don't you?
Isn't it like anything in life, though? By and large, you get out of it what you put into it. I learned tons, but I studied like a mofo. Mostly because good grades don't come easy for me, so I have/had to.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Coach
You mean... you wish you paid attention?
I needed a ~3.8 GPA for my graduate program so I worked very hard as well. But I feel my four year degree was almost useless for both working in the field of that degree and for my graduate education.
The graduate program I attended is also ineffective at preparing good practitioners.
An environment in which a person encounters only beliefs or opinions that coincide with their own, so that their existing views are reinforced and alternative ideas are not considered.
I needed a ~3.8 GPA for my graduate program so I worked very hard as well. But I feel my four year degree was almost useless for both working in the field of that degree and for my graduate education.
The graduate program I attended is also ineffective at preparing good practitioners.
Yeah, but university isn't a vocational school, so I don't know why anyone would have the expectation that it is a four-year job training stint. I didn't come out knowing how to write press releases, annual reports, letters to stakeholders, internal communications, pen different voices, etc., but without the education I wouldn't have been competent enough to do all those things I learned on the job. Surely most degrees have a parallel to that.
My most influential professor was DeLloyd Guth at UBC (now Manitoba I think, maybe retired now). He taught our Legal History course, but he also spent a great deal of time teaching us how to write more concisely and precisely. Using active voice. I don't think I ever mastered his lessons, but I never had another professor that spent so much time teaching about writing.
Interesting! I had a hard time switching my writing to passive voice for lab reports. I got corrected on it often in high school but didn't master passive voice until undergrad. I almost never use it now...
Yeah, but university isn't a vocational school, so I don't know why anyone would have the expectation that it is a four-year job training stint. I didn't come out knowing how to write press releases, annual reports, letters to stakeholders, internal communications, pen different voices, etc., but without the education I wouldn't have been competent enough to do all those things I learned on the job. Surely most degrees have a parallel to that.
Well, theoretically it isn't I guess. But I feel like you may specifically be referring to the "softer" degrees, ie communications, english, general studies, etc.
If you're taking an engineering degree with a specialty in geomatics and surveying, shouldn't you know how to do that? If it's on the job learning, what would happen if we just tried skipping the 4 year degree part and just teaching them how to work? My engineer friends claim they use about 5% of their degree as well.
I don't know about you but I would like my surgeon to have performed some surgery before he operates on me.
An environment in which a person encounters only beliefs or opinions that coincide with their own, so that their existing views are reinforced and alternative ideas are not considered.
Well, theoretically it isn't I guess. But I feel like you may specifically be referring to the "softer" degrees, ie communications, english, general studies, etc.
If you're taking an engineering degree with a specialty in geomatics and surveying, shouldn't you know how to do that? If it's on the job learning, what would happen if we just tried skipping the 4 year degree part and just teaching them how to work? My engineer friends claim they use about 5% of their degree as well.
I don't know about you but I would like my surgeon to have performed some surgery before he operates on me.
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I use mine. Went to school for design and have worked in the field for 26 years now. That said, I did also take a lot of extra training to expand my expertise.
I think there is a component of knowledge and skills acquisition and a component of art creation to all degrees. Some you have to advance quite far to get to the state of the art level. But it's definitely not an either or.
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