University is Good

I get tired, angry, disappointed, and frustrated whenever I hear the tired old saw that a university education is a waste.

It goes like this: Forget science and the liberal arts (especially the liberal arts/humanities). Focus on practical, rather than intellectual, skills, forget knowledge, and train everyone to make and fix things. Take up a trade or become a health-care worker.

This mantra has been around for decades, is nonsense at best, and damaging/untrue at worst. The most recent article"Revalorizing the Trades"  is by Camille Paglia in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

A disclaimer is in order here.

I am not disparaging the trades/health fields or those who train and work in them. Trades and health workers are absolutely necessary. In many places, they are or will be in short supply. It's honest, interesting work, exactly what many people want, and the pay is good. But these vocations aren't for everyone, couldn't employ everybody, and would leave gaping holes in many other areas where we need people with a university education.

The argument for trades, especially, is so often based on incorrect assumptions. Paglia's article is no exception; she argues that "jobs, jobs, jobs" should be the primary concern for educators, but that there "is little flexibility in American higher education to allow for alternative career tracks" (alternative to the professions, in this case).

First, I would argue that a university education is training for a job, but not directly and narrowly as Paglia and others recommend. The proof is in the pudding; graduates get and keep a range of jobs for which they are uniquely suited. That proof puts the lie to the other assumption -  that a liberal arts education (and university education across the board) doesn't lead to jobs, jobs, jobs.

A university education equals jobs.  It leads to good jobs, portable jobs, interesting jobs, well-paying jobs, prestigious jobs, flexible jobs, famous jobs, creative jobs, secure jobs, necessary jobs - just about any kind of job many people could want - a Google search proves the point. Rice University (among many others)  has a document showing the myths and realities about jobs for liberal arts grads - it includes a list of fields in which grads find work (most are not in the professions).

So what exactly is the problem?

The economy is one reason. University is expensive. Job loss is a huge concern right now.

Also, nurses, electricians, carpenters who train specifically for their jobs and then find them are fairly easy to track. Politicians and administrators can point to their successes much more easily, and the concept is simpler to grasp: electrical training = electrical-field job. Easy.

People with university degrees are much harder to track in the job market, and their career paths don't translate easily to flip-chart simplicity. History major =President of the United States (Kennedy).

It's harder to track the psychology major who, ten years later, has become a tv hockey producer, or the religious studies major who is now the director of business and policy for a major tv network. The liberal arts major who works for the defence department, is CEO of a huge company, an astronaut, policy manual writer for the UN, international coordinator for a major annual charity event.

If every interesting, important, and lucrative job had a direct educational path and an accrediting body, life would be simpler. Train for job X; get job X. But it doesn't always work that way.

Plus, a university education is a value-added endeavour. Graduates are more than trained employees. Graduates form the educated citizenry that allows democracy to flourish, keeps zealots in check, and the arts, science, law, medicine flourishing. They are trained to analyze, criticize, theorize, and question.

University graduates are not only employable, they are necessary to the efficient and progressive functioning of society. The biggest expense would be not to have enough of them.

L'Art of Economics

In Karen Horn's article "The Serendipity of Genius" in Standpoint, she discusses the circumstances and situations of economists who became Nobel laureates.

The article is based on Horn's recent book Roads to Wisdom: Conversations with Ten Nobel Laureates in Economics (2009).

Horn sees several common influences on the intellect, choices, and future theoretical pursuits of fledgling economists: "they were attracted by its questions," but only identified the field as a choice when they "saw it in class;" family background; worldviews; events; the serendipity of the muse; and individual character.

The final influence strikes me especially - the value of a university/liberal arts education. Vernon Smith (Nobel prize for Economics 2002)

was fascinated to discover at college that the topics that had been debated at the dinner table were actually "things you could study, that it needn't be only a matter of opinion. You could actually base your opinions on analysis, on investigation, on some kind of understanding about how society and how the economy work."

The growing trend to de-value the humanities and a liberal arts education has and will have far-reaching negative consequences. In all areas of human endeavour, we need the understanding that comes from knowing about humanity, its traditions, and its history. Similarly, Horn sees the need for economics:

Economics must also again be understood as an encompassing social science, deeply ploughing the rich common ground with philosophy, sociology, politics and history.

Skills training just won't cut it!

I would like to invite Karen Horn to my soiree.

The Belatedness of Criticism

In his recent article "Diminishing Returns in Humanities Research" in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Mark Bauerlein laments what he sees as redundancy in a vast sea of literary criticism, which demonstrates

the shift from criticism-as-explanation to criticism-as-performance. Instead of thinking of scholarship as the explication of the object—what a poem means or a painting represents—humanists cast criticism as an interpretative act, an analytical eye in process.

Bauerlein argues that the overwhelming number of works comes from not only the demands of theory, but also as the consequence of the publish or perish imperative for those who seek tenure - especially for those experiencing belatedness in criticism. What to do when all the good stuff's been said?

For tenure decisions, Bauerlein recommends that committees look only at 100 pages of material. He further suggests that

subsidizers should shift their support away from saturated areas and toward unsaturated areas, in particular toward research into teaching and even more toward classroom and curricular initiatives.

The shift in subsidies should occur because the numbers of students who do not attend or pay attention in classes is quite staggering:

in the 2007 Your First College Year survey, conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute, ...70 percent skipped class, 62 percent "came late," and 44 percent fell asleep. Their engagement with instructors outside of class is similarly tenuous. Their engagement with instructors outside of class is similarly tenuous. On the 2008 National Survey of Student Engagement, 38 percent of first-year students "never" discussed ideas from readings or classes, and 39 percent did so only "sometimes."

More "research into teaching and...classroom and curricular initiatives" as the solution to the problem puts the onus on faculty to somehow counter the effects of the digital age Bauerlein writes about in his book The Dumbest Generation.

The digital age and resulting drop in reading, the self-absorption in juvenile pursuits and interests are surely the business of faculty, but should hardly drive research in the humanities.

I agree with Bauerlein's premise that there is too much redundant performance criticism out there, but I do not agree with his solutions. Still, it is refreshing to see someone tackling the issues.

I would like to invite Mark Bauerlein to my soiree.