Is A "Well-Rounded" Education a Good One?

hendridm asks: "Universities seem to push being well-rounded, or knowing a little bit about everything but nothing about anything in particular. They attempt to teach courses that could help you succeed in your lifelong career, whatever it might be. It seems to me that it would be better to teach skills that would help us in the first 10 years of employment. As a senior Information Systems major in a state university in the Midwest, I can think of countless examples that support this idea." Of course, a well-rounded education can be a good one, it just depends on your definition of 'rounded'. It doesn't exactly do students a favor by exposing them to the forrest until they have a good grasp of the concept of the "tree", which is hedridm's main point. Do any of you know of curriculums that are good examples of a true well-rounded education?

"In my Finance course, I learn how to balance a corporate stock portfolio, but I have no clue how to start a business or pay my employees.

In my System Analysis & Design course, I spend 3 hours constructing data-flow diagrams, entity-relationship diagrams, and Ghantt charts for programs that take around an hour to code!

In my Management course, my professor discusses techniques for being an effective CEO, but I don't even know how to manage a few subordinates, much less an entire company.

In my MIS course, we learn about client-server technology, but when I ask if my peers have tested their web pages on Macintosh, they reply, "Why would I have to do that?" Most of them don't even think of Linux as an operating system, but more as a hacker's toy. Forget about asking them to make it Mozilla or Lynx compatible. They don't want to waste their time. But the University will make sure it is ADA compliant, since any institution that receives federal funding must require this...

Don't most "big picture" lessons come with experience, through person's journey from entry-level employee to a skilled IT/business professional? Wouldn't it make more sense to teach things that will help students early in their careers, like technical skills and other trade/foundation skills that are often required of entry-level, non-management employees? Does the average entry-level IT person need to make the sort of decisions a CEO or CIO needs to make? Do companies really want me to spend more time diagramming a program than I need to program it in the first place? (What about just documenting the code?) Knowing the big picture is good, but how do you get to that level if you don't have any skills?

My question for Slashdot readers is: Is this really what companies want of today's graduates?"

Comments

University isn't worth all that much nowadays

[Quasar1999]

Bah... everything I know I taught myself... I have no university education, and yet am a successful software developer... No university material I have ever seen comes close to cover the topics that I learned myself...(but to their credit, my physics skills are lacking... though I've yet to use 'physics knowledge' at my job, EVER!)

University now a days seems to be an extension of public schools... 'You don't know what you wanna be when you grow up, so here's a little from column A,B,C,etc.'... For crying out loud, your in your early 20's... Figure out what you wanna do and focus on just that one topic... I had to deal with way too many University graduates that can't code worth sh*t, but they have a degree... How bloody nice... Why didn't they teach you to code???

What stops you from aquiring skills on your own?

[Anonymous Coward]

You dont need to learn that stuff in university, Go read a few books geez!!

University is not for skill building, its for getting PROOF.

I know about computers, i know as much as a guy with a degree, I dont have a degree, how do i know so much? Because I taught myself.

But i still need a degree to PROVE i know what i know.

"Gen. Ed." courses suck

[6EQUJ5]

General Education requiremnets for graduation are a scam at my school. They have nothing to do with what I want to learn, and I take them bitterly, selling out my values just to get a good grade.

(You should take all those broad courses in high school. That's where you figure out what you want to do in life, and in college you go do it!)

The only real reason they demand these courses is to keep students like me in school for 5 years, since many colleges are run like a business, not a traditional place to learn and train for your interest.

Re:Public Vs. Private

[ekrout]

Thanks for making a note of my typographical error, Coward.

get a grip...

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, a lot of people seem to be confusing training and education. Look, if you're at an institution that requires you to take something you don't like, nobody's forcing you to stay there. If you want training, go to a place like DeVry. If you want an education, go to a college or university.

But what's disturbs me most is the fact that the question and 99% of the responses make the assumption that learning is an entirely passive process on the part of the student. Autrement dit, that it is entirely the responsibility of a parent, high school, college, university, or society to impart to people all of the information and training they will need to succeed.

What ever happened to learning as an active process? To the understanding that no training or education is perfect, that deficiencies are necessarily going to exist, and that it might, just might, be incumbent upon students to remediate them?

What I'd like to see more of is people trading tips on how to get the information and training they missed and a lot less whining about how terrible their education and/or training was...