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How Do Universities Prepare Graduates For Jobs That Don't Yet Exist? (theguardian.com)
Technological changes such as automation and artificial intelligence are expected to transform the employment landscape. The question is: will our education system keep up? From a report: The answer matters because an estimated 65% of children entering primary schools today will work in jobs and functions that don't currently exist, according to a recent Universities UK report. The research, which explores the "rapid pace of change and increasing complexity of work", also warns that the UK isn't even creating the workers that will be needed for the jobs that can be anticipated. By 2030, it will have a talent deficit of between 600,000 and 1.2 million workers in the financial and business sector, and technology, media and telecommunications sector.
University leaders would be "foolish" not to pay attention, says Lancaster University vice-chancellor Mark E Smith. "We look at the trends in the job market and the skills employers are looking for, and we listen to what employers are saying. We don't want to be talking about yesterday's problem." This is one of the reasons the university is a partner in the National Institute of Coding. The programme, led by the University of Bath, is bringing 25 universities together with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and global companies including IBM, Cisco, BT and Microsoft to create "the next generation of digital specialists".
Jordan Morrow, chair of the Data Literacy Project advisory board and global head of data literacy at US-based analytics firm Qlik, thinks that in a climate of uncertainty, universities should focus on developing the thing they have specialised in for centuries: critical thinking. "We need people who can give insight, not just observations," he says. Likewise, he says, the "softer" skills of communication and storytelling are vital. "The reality is that data scientists are trained to do very complex and complicated things with data, but their training is not necessarily in people skills or leadership. It becomes an issue when you have, say, a very intelligent data scientist who has put together an analysis, but doesn't know how to communicate it."
University leaders would be "foolish" not to pay attention, says Lancaster University vice-chancellor Mark E Smith. "We look at the trends in the job market and the skills employers are looking for, and we listen to what employers are saying. We don't want to be talking about yesterday's problem." This is one of the reasons the university is a partner in the National Institute of Coding. The programme, led by the University of Bath, is bringing 25 universities together with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and global companies including IBM, Cisco, BT and Microsoft to create "the next generation of digital specialists".
Jordan Morrow, chair of the Data Literacy Project advisory board and global head of data literacy at US-based analytics firm Qlik, thinks that in a climate of uncertainty, universities should focus on developing the thing they have specialised in for centuries: critical thinking. "We need people who can give insight, not just observations," he says. Likewise, he says, the "softer" skills of communication and storytelling are vital. "The reality is that data scientists are trained to do very complex and complicated things with data, but their training is not necessarily in people skills or leadership. It becomes an issue when you have, say, a very intelligent data scientist who has put together an analysis, but doesn't know how to communicate it."
so medical, military, civil service, hotel and restaurants, hookers and blow... won't exists in the future... nice to know.
You could start my imagining the simplest jobs, that do not require complex reasoning, that might exist in the future. For example, one might imagine a petting zookeeper or a conga player. Seems like these will still be around for the foreseeable future - just an idea. I feel sure there could be many more
You don't *train* for a job ( if you're running a college correctly) - you teach the students **how** to learn new things. And BTW the need to teach students how to communicate clearly has been present for a couple hundred years. it's hardly a NewThing in education.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
At all levels below university
Instead of asking how we can offload companies training expenses on the school system, they should be wondering how to educate. The basics of reading, writing, mathematics, basic science/chemistry, and history is timeless. If you get those down while encouraging group and independent learning, you've done your job as an educator.
University and Up
They've got bigger problems on their plate right now. How about they sort that out first, and then worry about 20 years from now? It's like having a broken car and worrying about gas prices. A disabled vehicle consumes no gas.
The point of a university is (should be?) to teach people how to learn. (In addition, of course, to how to hold your liquor, put on a condom, and provide life-long devotion to its sports teams.) Critical thinking is/should be the core of all institutes of higher education.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
It is something that is part nature (born with)...and part environment, how did you grow up and learn how to interact with people.
I have found that having really good people skills, especially if you can readily persuade people to do what you want, etc...can often be MORE valuable that pure tech knowledge and proficiency.
If you have people skills, and decent tech skills, you can go quite far, often further than those that are only tech, even if brilliant at it.
Sadly today, with the youth having grown up with faces stuck in phones and tablets rather than developing real people skills in meatspace, they are going to be at a disadvantage to those few that actually DID develop people skills.
I guess it is never too late to start to learn, but it sure is easier if you start out young, and learn how people interact, and how you can read them and interact with friends, and even manipulate others when needed.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Universities aren't for job training. You're thinking of Community College. Universities exist to teach fundamentals of science. When you graduate then your employer gives you specific job training.
Oh, you mean "How Do Universities Prepare Graduates For Jobs so employers don't have to pay for industry specific training anymore?". Sorry, you can see why I'd get confused....
(Bitter as hell because I'm paying for $32/k for 2 years of Nursing school for my kid that's basically on the job training that you used to get paid for, but fat lot of good I can do about it in this hyper-competitive job market).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I mean, wtf, isn't this what college/university is all about? Learning how to learn? How to research? How to discover new things you didn't know before?
Otherwise, you might as well just go to a trade school.
The best way to face technical situations is to retain your curiosity. It is not about memorizing textbooks, it is about staying curious.
They already train students for jobs that don't exist. I don't see the problem.
Universities exist to earn money and give tenure. The old saying,
those who can, do, those who can't, teach
is correct. Apprenticeships, guilds, OJT are what provide job training. Too many college graduates with useless degrees ended up in human resources in our corporations and pushed the BS notion that a college degree should be a requirement to get hired.
They're almost like businesses, only greedier. Do you actually think they care about much else?
Just keep on buying what we tell you to buy.
Sincerely,
Facebook, google, apple, tesla, & amazon
dumbfucks..
They teach you the state of the art in your field. You're expected to stay up on it.
If you can't extend from base principles, you're screwed.
If you don't know how to teach yourself things, you are in for a rough life.
And these don't prepare for any job in existence (yet).
Here you go, teach them this:
Over the next 30 years the state of the art will change. The basic tools for how to be an effective human will not. Don't try to teach kids how to do jobs that don't exist yet, instead teach them how to prepare themselves for the jobs when they do exist.
Of course, the hard part is figuring out how to teach all that.
You just do not know what will be marketable or not after you graduate.
A guy I know who heard about the "nursing shortage" went and became a RN. He had trouble getting the first job and the days of walking off one job to another are gone.
When I was in school, a BA/BS in Math wasn't worth much unless you were actuarial - most math majors became teachers. Then the interweb came around and those skills became valuable.
A BS CS used to be something but now, if you didn't go to a top school, the best you can hope for is "have you tried turning it off and on again?" (My big corp ONLY recruits from MIT and Ivy League. State? Apply online with everyone else; but there are no entry level positions up there.)
And when I was in school, there was no such thing as H1-bs or offshoring. When I was at IBM in the early 90s, an old timer pulled me aside and pointed at a group of Indians and said, "When I started, those people weren't around." Now, IBM is pretty much Indian Business Machines.
A woman I know studied ART. She went and got a MBA at a pretty good school. She is now a Director of Marketing and getting $50K bonuses on top of her nice 6 figure pay. (Her engineer husband is making a bit less and working longer hours.)
Then there's the person who started out as a cook, then went to culinary school, then went and got his MBA and he is now a multimillionaire restaurateur doing what he loves - there are hard times and times he would rather be a line cook again, but all in all, he's where he wants to and should be.
Just say'in.
Point? Career advice from academics and articles written by failures who work for media outlets struggling for content are a complete waste of time.
Another point - chasing after something just because it's marketable will lead to a life of boredom and shallowness. If you love art or music, go ahead and study it. But have a plan to somehow use it in a marketable way like the above example.
The same way they always have? Giving students a broad education, steeping them in the great thinkers of their (and to some degree, other) cultures?
At least, that used to be the idea, I thought.
Well, it shouldn't be. Students are supposed to learn how to learn, in addition to generally useful skills (like foundations in science and math).
AI, of course. Q# as the programming language. VS as the IDE. Windows 10 as the OS. Trump Republicans paying for it. One way or another. Imgonnagitchagitchagitcha!
They are able to prepare students for jobs that don't exist by educating them instead of simply training them.
You are there to be fleeced, pay vulgar amounts for textbooks, buy overpriced parking spots & meal plans, and pay for safe spaces and other wasteful aggravating pointless finger-wagging politically correct bullshit. At least that's what my school was all about (and I was a CS major, not fucking "gender studies" or polisci). Then I found out the employers didn't really care if I had a degree anyway. They cared if a candidate going to burden & annoy their existing staff by not being able to carry water. University students are not likely to "learn life skills", "figure out how to think critically", or "acquire job skills". So, that debate is laughable and pointless because both sides are living in a fantasy-that-once-was-but-no-longer. Let's talk about actual universities not what a tenured professor thinks their school does while watching from his ivory tower or some new grad wants to rationalize after just dumping their parent's life savings into it. Unless there is some kind of regulatory requirement for education like with health care or certain types of mechanical engineering the cash spent on a college education usually would have gone a lot further getting private certifications or vocational training. Some research shows you'll have an easier time getting work, stay in school less time, not be forced to waste time because of someone's politically correct asshatism, and best of all make more money faster. My brother got his CCIE instead of college. Made $140k his first year and now @ around $190k in a nice town with low-priced real estate. He's loving it. No student debt, either. The whole episode, including is training in Singapore (because hey, why not?) was about a $15,000 exercise.
I was googling along this articles thought process. And found the following.
2015 out of Australia - http://theconversation.com/uni...
2011 from the Guardian - https://www.theguardian.com/te...
I have read the comments here, and actually have no quarrels with either argument. But this topic has been around for a long time, and probably will always be a topic.
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
My gender studies degree prepared me well for an exciting career as a live Organ Donor. I finally feel like a useful contributor to society.
This isn't even news. It's recycling some old claims made by Andreas Scheicher, et al. at the OECD's education department. The 65% figure or anything similar to it has yet to be supported by any evidence whatsoever -- I know several experts in education who have tried & failed to even find a citation of the figure. Re:
"...there is a need for skills such as judgement, decision-making, and analysis and evaluation of systems."
This doesn't make sense unless we teach people sufficient knowledge to support these skills, i.e. What do you want them to judge, make-decisions, analyse, & evaluate? What kinds of foundational knowledge do we need in order to be able to make use of these skills? Currently, our primary, secondary, & post-secondary educational institutions are doing a great job of providing students with a broad range of useful foundational knowledge as well as analytical & critical thinking skills.
Not mentioned in the article but implicit is the need for "21st century skills." They're often not actually listed or defined when these claims are made but when they are, they look an awful lot like 3rd century BCE skills. (See: http://www.ascd.org/publicatio...)
Another fallacy is that we need to teach school children to write code, e.g. code.org. So far, research shows that learning to code requires that students already have problem solving & logical reasoning skills that are sufficiently well-developed for them to transfer to the abstract concepts involved in writing code. Additionally, there's no evidence of any benefits to other areas of study or thinking that learning to code can provide. In other words, coding requires knowledge & skills learned from elsewhere & doesn't provide any benefits to elsewhere, i.e. it's a specialist cul-de-sac and end result of learning that's a waste of time in primary & secondary education. There are more useful & important things to be learned.
Re: so called "soft skills" like being able to communicate your ideas to others clearly & to participate in & manage teams, it turns out that the best communicators, participators, & managers are those who have a great deal of expertise & experience in their specific professional domain, & those skills don't necessarily transfer from one domain to another, e.g. a great sports coach doesn't necessarily make a great software team leader.
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
Brexit will solve those 1.2million unfulfilled jobs: they have been destroyed LOL
They're conflating "talent" and "skilled labor". You don't train talent and you don't teach talent, you find talent.
I'm of two opinions about communication.
The practical side of me says communications is important. The ideal side of me says if the audience can't understand it, either you don't understand it or the audience is not smart enough in whatever domain that it matters. That said, I have issue with many in my profession using technical jargon because they use it incorrectly. They use it more like an ambiguous buzzword than a technical word with specific meaning. But again, this really just means the person talking doesn't understand.
In my experience, communication is more like a soft skill of using simple enough words that the receiver thinks they understand just enough. Just a "feel good" kind of skill. It's like describing a cube to someone who doesn't understand 3D shapes. In the end, you just tell them it a bunch of connected lines and they feel better about themselves because they know what a line is.
For the most part, that's a complete canard.
60% of the adult American population belongs to the arithmetic Special Olympics:
* couldn't solve a quadratic equation
* couldn't integrate x
* couldn't differentiate x
* couldn't explain why anyone would ever add two logarithms
* couldn't factor 1050 into primes without several mulligans
* couldn't check a calculation by casting out nines
* couldn't explain the significance of the law of large numbers
* think that the "Bell" curve was invented by Alexander Graham Bell
* think that "Bay's" rule concerns the golden ratio of cuts to cut-offs
* think that tariffs aren't paid for by the end consumer
* and don't even get them started on randomness or correlation.
And it's the cossetted research scientist who can't communicate?
The innumeracy gap is real, and it's spectacular.
But sure, you can add a few extra courses to their already intense course load to help them best explain the paintings of M. C. Escher to a congenitally blind man.
Data scientist: "You see, it's about perspective ... "
Now the blind person believes that he or she has perspective, only in no way does it resemble the "perspective" under discussion.
Because if you do, you create artificial need for something that doesn't exist. Then lo-and-behold, someone comes along with grants and actually makes this "job" into a reality to appease all the idiots who indebted themselves for a useless degree.
Universities should teach you how to learn; so that YOU can go out and create these "jobs that don't exist yet" because you're smart enough to realize there's a need for X by doing Y.
I tend to rant.
Reasoning skills and learning skills are certainly important. We could be teaching a lot of that long before people go to a university, but some people haven't learned it, so okay teach that. Through deliberate teaching, my four-year-old is better at critical thinking and asking "does this claim pass the sniff test?" than many adults I know.
Also, there is a TON of knowledge that doesn't change much. Another big stack of knowledge is about "standing on the shoulders of giants".
The maths are huge field where the things that are helpful to know don't change much, and what IS new in maths builds upon the old; algebra, calculus, and set theory haven't gone away. You might say "set theory? Who uses set theory in their job?" Ever heard of databases? SQL is a *direct* translation of set theory into convenient wording. It's not even *based* in set theory, it *is* set theory. Lots of different people use set theory for their job, and most don't even realize it, so they don't do their job as well as they could. They do better by being able to look at a problem and say "oh, this is just basic sets, I know sets".
Just the other day I was trying to show a co-worker how to do a job in a very simple way. He was getting all confused, making it super complicated and wrong. I drew some basic 8th grade sets on my whiteboard and he was completely lost. Okay, let's put aside the sets and view it as simple Boolean logic (and/or etc). Nope, he didn't know anything about a&b=true. This is maybe middle school math. It hasn't changed in the last hundred years.
How about some basic mechanics of how things work, leverage and things like that, weight? Ever needed to work with any of that? That's Newtonian physics. Hasn't changed for hundreds of years.
90% of the arguments we have on Slashdot wouldn't happen if we all remembered some basic history. We argue about what might happen if ... whatever policy. That policy you're advocating trying has already been done a dozen times, in a dozen different places. We already know the results, if we know a bit of history. History doesn't change all that much in couple decades.
I work in computer engineering. That's a fast-moving field, right? Gotta be on the cutting edge, only stuff that came out in the last five years matters, right? Not so much. The old guy frequently amazes the newer guys who started with Ruby on Rails, because old dude has been doing the same things for years in other languages. He understands it conceptually, knows the principles it is based on, and understands what's going on under the covers. That's all knowledge stuff.
When JSON first came out, some people said "forget all that old stuff, we're doing everything in JSON now - and promptly created a bunch of critical security vulnerabilities. Some of us who had some knowledge about objects and what goes on under the covers saw the problems right away. We had knowledge of underlying principles and technologies. That can all be taught.
https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=13100752&cid=57842460 -- Here's another anti-education idiot caught blathering defenses of ignorance as if virtue.
Oh look, it's you.
Just train the students to be professional complainers. Then they can have a nice career as a professor of gender studies, an anti-harassment specialist, a diversity consultant, or a VP at an organization like "Excelencia In Education" (https://www.edexcelencia.org/). Or, if that doesn't work, they can just apply for disability because they're "anxious".
Complaining is the biggest growth industry in the US right now, and I don't see it being replaced by automation.
As everybody knows, pataphysics is the science of imaginary solutions. With such a degree, you will be immediatly hired for doing non-existing jobs. Unfortunately, your salary will be imaginary as well...
This is one of those great ideas, but really difficult to implement.
In the States folks have been trying to get critical thinking into K-12 for a LONG time.. and keep running into this fundamental roadblock... if the kids learn critical thinking in school they may start to question things... like their parents, boneheaded government decisions, and (God forbid) - the nature of God itself (first person singular neuter). We can't have that! - All that questioning going on! We have to keep our phony-baloney jobs! (elected leader asks all advisors for "Harrumphs!") (see :Blazing Saddles).
I completely agree - the key skills I use daily are:
Analysis and solution development for complex problems.
Communications regarding that analysis and conclusions.
Customer facing communication (they aren't technical - so, need to bridge the gap)
Decision making - including priority setting.
And synthesis of observations from alternate perspectives.
Where did I learn this?
Eagle Project - yes, for all the BSA's faults (and I agree with a number of them) - the completion of an Eagle Project is no small feat.
Playing kick-ball, flashlight tag, and other Calvinball-ish (tm) games with neighborhood kids and school recess. With neighbors that didn't yell at us to get off their lawn.
The viewpoint that even ordinary people can, do, and should be encouraged to have deep, profound, thoughts.
Reading - voraciously. It doesn't have to be SciFi - but reading drops you into someone else's mind.
And teachers that supported thinking - not just regurgitation. For instance, took a High School class called 'Ideas of Man' - not so much an intro to philosophy class (different types, major figures, etc.) - but an analysis on why various ones were developed. What were the conditions (social, econ, govt, religious, etc.) that caused it's development? What fed into it? What did it feed? Both Eastern and Western thought were covered - with no emphasis on a specific one.
Good conversation.
Queue liberal arts majors who are going to jump into to say how their degrees prepare students for these future jobs.
I'm tempted to say have them learn AI, but it will be only the superstars in the field making things - the best self-driving car researchers will make the software for ALL the cars. It'll be just like sports stars only a few will 'make it'
Universities are not trade schools. They don't teach job skills, and they don't spoon-feed graduates how-to manuals on certain "jobs".
They give you a broad-based education within a particular field. They teach you how to teach yourself what you have to do for a job.
The question fundamentally misses the point of what an education is.
Universities churn out tones of doctoral candidates for a minuscule number of positions for a long time now. I've worked with PhDs in astrophysics, plasma physics, English, etc. I'm sure all believed that would continue in their pursuits for the rest of their lives, and the universities encourage such dreams, because grad students are a huge pool of cheap labor. That's the job they wind up with.
The first job I took after leaving university was in a field that didn't exist when I started the course, 3 years earlier.
And because of that, nobody was able to assess my ability to do it. However, it turns out that because of my broad range of skills and understanding of things that hadn't been on the curriculum as part of my undergrad studies - but which interested me anyway - I was able to beat many other candidates with better academic results. But who had far narrower fields of knowledge.
And it turned out I was pretty good at the job, too! It formed the basis for my career.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
..both as a former student and now as a business owner, colleges are pretty shitty at preparing students for actual work NOW. Maybe they should focus on that before trying to prepare students for jobs that don't exist yet?
-Styopa
They don't teach job skills
They absoluteley do!
They teach doctors everything about doctoring. Other medical branches, too. The teach lawyers about the law. They teach accountants to account. The teach architects to do whatever the hell it is they do.
In fact almost every profession requires a degree qualification in the relevant subject as a basis for entrance. Therefore in almost every well-paid job, there will be a person who was taught how to do it at university. In a course specifically designed to feed into the jobs market.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Before you tout people skills don't you think it would behoove you to develop some? You're a troll, a known nazi coward on this site. You have only pedo skills.
The best that employers can do to screen for soft skills is to search for them on a resume, but they don't generally do a good job of it anyways - and they often aren't high priorities for the employers either. As long as the applicants have the hard skills, the employers will often help out with the soft skills.
And this is coming from someone who is working a job that did not exist even 20 years ago.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
You're thinking about vocational schools. Universities are explicitly not job training.
The original purpose of a university is to provide a rounded education which in theory will allow the student to provide a higher potential value to society than a focused education in a single discipline. It was the intended destination for the children of the elite, folks who would be seated at the economic, legal, or political controls of the country in the future, their 'jobs' already provided as a legacy of their parents.
What, you thought that the commoners would be sending their kids to college? With no child labor laws, did you think they'd even go to primary school when they could be earning money or doing work on the farm?
While the perception of college (and the value of education) has changed, the structure really hasn't changed all that much. You can claim that it's for job training, but nothing important in it's structure has changed, so I would find that relatively hard to argue. It still looks like a duck, still quacks like a duck...
"They teach doctors everything about doctoring" - Not really. They teach the foundation. There's a reason they have to resident-train. Guess what it is? Hint: It's not because they already know everything.
"The teach lawyers about the law." - Again, time in trade required to be allowed to take, and then hopefully pass, the BAR. Why? It's not because they know everything already.
"They teach accountants to account." - Yes.
"In fact almost every profession requires a degree qualification in the relevant subject as a basis for entrance." - Or relevant equivalent work experience, in fact. Guess why?
Once they're lined up we can cue them individually to jump in
University research creates the jobs of the future. How are they behind in teaching what they're laying the path for? Maybe specific universities don't conduct research or integrate that research with their undergraduate program. Mine did though, so no problem here.
If they're talking about courses that are still being taught for careers which are disappearing, then that's a totally valid concern. The way to fix that is to rate the University programs on job placement success. My university did that too, it was part of their sales pitch even.
This article seems to be about some universities not performing well on the measures that are already in place for differentiating between good and not so good universities. What's the solution then? Research before applying.
Think globally but act within local variable scope.
I don't think it's that simple. It's possible tariffs could create more lower and middle-class jobs, thus giving one more spending money. It may also increase jobs but decrease the average number of trinkets one can buy. Should people prefer jobs or stuff? Math won't tell you what you should want, only the side-effects at best.
I agree tariffs probably "hurt" somebody as a side-effect, but the distribution of the down-sides is hard to pin down in a complex economy. You can't always assume spherical cow jobs.
As far as the other things on the list, I used to be able to answer most, but those skills didn't get exercised over time, and thus rusted.
Table-ized A.I.
Most expect both kinds of skills out of a University education: practical get-a-job-now skills, and general problem-solving & team skills. You can't move up the ladder if you can't get on the ladder.
Table-ized A.I.
You meant CUE didn't you, dog-eating troll? LEARN ENGLISH so you can be WITTY ALSO, or QUEUE your ass back to SCHOOL so you can throw yourself off the roof in family shame.
When you're being prepared for a job/work of some kind, it's a trade school.
When you're educated, you learn to learn and to prepare your self.
I institutions of higher learning are functioning as trade schools and you can't get a job when you get finished, it should be counted as fraud and litigated.
no wonder trump was elected.
There is nothing like having a BA in BS when it come to business BS.
Sorry, I couldn't help it.
Ahh, the whole, we don't teach something useful, but teach people how to learn trope. This is a genius level catch phrase, since it justifies nearly anything and is never examined for accuracy. It makes you feel good. It sounds good, but at the end of the day, is meaningless.
As an engineering college professor, I can attest to the fact that this is used all the time, by people who teach impractical things. Yet, there is no validating evidence that what they teach matters, helps people learn, or teaches problems solving. At best, it comes down to anecdotes or , "well, if it was good enough for D'Vincci"
In other cultures, they do not claim this or teach these things not really study them. They focus on the necessary, and frankly, are beating us badly. We produce students with far less competent in math and science, and it is beginning to cost us as world economies improve and brain drain happens less often.
"Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.
Actually, it is about memorizing text books. If you do not have a huge background of facts and a high level of understanding, then you are regulated to scientific baby talk and will achieve little of value. Curiosity comes easy, knowledge does not.
"Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.
The whole point of a university education is to indoctrinate students in the Democratic Party's far-left victimhood identity politics while maintaining cushy jobs that don't involve manual labor.
Everything else is secondary.
I heard a comedian joking about that but I have heard much less flattering almost as if education was unacceptable purely on anti-intellectual reasons. In my case I liked my teachers a lot over time. I picked my favorite professor almost by accident - when he skipped a very expensive cruise to take me out to dinner and answer questions - not that he had been less giving before, justvthat this really cost him something in addition to being a very charismatic, polymath, and excellent teacher
The way I see it, in order for society to function correctly and not devolve into a winner-take-all nightmare is to find a way to keep everyone employed. You need the super-geniuses who will advance the state of the art, good solid engineering/technician types who can problem solve and think critically, and yes you need something for the people who can't even graduate high school to do.The top two tiers start with a solid higher education experience, and the lower tier can be filled by vocational training.
20 years back I got a degree in chemistry. Other than being able to understand scientific discussions more than the average person, I don't directly use any knowledge I picked up in my job as a systems engineer. I do use a ton of the life skills I picked up along the way, such as:
- Being able to juggle multiple deadlines
- Taking in challenging material at a pretty rapid clip and making sense of it
- Troubleshooting complex problems and being able to reason my way through them
- Learning independence -- going to a big public university where no one directly cared about me was a good experience.
- And honestly, learning how to follow stupid rules, pick my battles, etc.
That's what university education should be. If you're an average person like me, you go through a course of study and join that middle tier of workers. If you're a super-genius, you move on to professional school or academia. What it isn't is an 18-month JavaScript bootcamp designed to make you a functional code monkey on Day 1 of your first job.
Universities should prepare students for jobs that don't exist by NOT preparing them for specific job skills. Give them the skills to pick up new skills on their own. And employers aren't blameless here -- on-the-job training of new grads needs to make a comeback.
It's true though, people always make fun of gender studies majors, but now they can find jobs as diversity officers.
Medicine and law are a little different in that their professional schools are very regimented compared to undergrad university studies. You're right that they don't learn everything. But, anyone getting through medical or law school has a common baseline level of knowledge. They have to pass a licensing exam to move on to the next phase of their training (resident or junior lawyer.)
Every time I run into a "rockstar developer" or "systems ninja" with mile-wide holes in their skills I wish we in IT had a more formal profession and barrier to entry.
But, TRAINING should be provided through apprenticeship or on the job training.
Education is not the same thing.
But do not worry, they have never done that and it is actually not their job. Universities give you a base-understanding of a specific field (well, unless you study gender-"studies" or something in that direction), but they do not and should not provide job training. If you had a really good university program, you will probably end up using something like 30% of the content during your career. On the plus-side, that will be often stuff you just cannot pick up on the side and cannot really learn on the job. And it will generally be the foundation for you to learn more and decide in which direction you actually want to take your professional life.
There are some roadblocks upcoming though. People that liked their university studies and were pretty good at a significant part of the subjects and it was in the STEM field do not need to worry: There will be an a constant and possibly increasing need for your services. However the large majority that was more average, did not really enjoy the subjects, struggled with many or most or was not in STEM will probably be hit by an accelerated wave of jobs vanishing. I don't wish that on anybody, I think anybody that tries should be able to find a way to live decently, but businesses are hell-bent on eliminating people for more short-term revenue improvements and society has not yet found a way to deal with that.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Students owing $100,000 for liberal arts degrees WILL have jobs, or the Student Loan office will come harvest their organs !! :-O
Seriously Slashdot, I am ashamed that the obvious one-word post had to be given by *ME*:
Barista
Teach people analysis and algebra and stats, not Javascript and PHP?
Ezekiel 23:20
By trying to be the institution with the most accurate crystal ball. Even if it is accurate, it's only going to be accurate for a very short time.
The best way to prepare people for jobs whose nature you can't predict is to educate them on generally useful things. Critical thinking. Research skills. Mathematics. Writing. Financial and economic literacy. How to work with other people. These are all skills that make someone adaptable.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The question assumes that the old higher education model of accumulating well-established knowledge into degree steps is the only way of preparing people for the job market. The problem with that is that the old model works for the old jobs, in restricted-entry professions. If you want to practice law, get educated the traditional way.
To address the new jobs, universities need to make use of their current research to squirt small modules of current learning into people already in the job market, whether or not the student's earlier jobs (if any) required a basic degree to start with. These small modules will end up corresponding with a plethora of on-job certifications that would replace traditional advanced degrees.
... Companies that needed workers for jobs that were new TRAINED them. Why must universities (ie., our taxes) blaze the trail for companies?
Nothing worse than a college preparing you for jobs that are on their way out or will leave you hopelessly pigeon-holed.
U dont need it, There's so much easy to access Information around... you just need the love of learning... you know that coding bug.
[($)]
I studied history and philosophy. ("Would you like fries with that, sir?") Twenty years later, I work as a technical director. Remote from Bali, on a Silicon Valley salary. My boss, the CTO, studied astrophysics.
Now the Agile(tm) code monkeys who work for us, yeah they studied engineering or CS. Which is probably why they (mostly) are so slow to pick up new tech skills, use Javascript for *everything*, and have so little appreciation for code quality.
In the old days, Universities used to train people for jobs that didn't exist yet by giving them a broad education that was focused on the learning process, not on specific job training. Then technical institutes and community colleges decided they would call themselves universities and give out degrees too, and the whole tertiary education system became dumbed down to their level. So now, when we need old fashioned university graduates that can adapt to whatever is thrown at them, all we have is millennials who can't wipe their own ass without being sent on a training course.
I am a retired 71 (soon to be 72) year old engineer. NOTHING I worked on the last two decades of my career existed when I graduated. That is the difference between an education, which teaches you how to think and how to learn things that, "have never been done before" and training, which teaches you how to do things that are already known and how to just do those. The difference can be thought of as follows:
Which would be more appropriate for your teenage daughter? A class on sex education or a class in training on sexual techniques.
Just think about it for a moment. Who is currently qualified to teach a subject that doesn't even exist yet ? Where did they get their education ? They just collect their salary and by the time the students realize that the teacher didn't have a clue, the university will have their money and the teacher will have tenure.
You live and learn, or you don't learn much.
plastics.
As in most things, the good doctor recognized this and wrote a story about it (or at least pretty close):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
This is the problem I have, both with Universities and the people who defend them. You let them off the hook with unworthy arguments:
1). There is a snobbery against those "vocational schools" that isn't intellectually justifiable. For example, exactly what do vocational schools do that stymies "learning to learn"? I mean, they have "school" in the name, how do you prevent either learning or meta-learning?
2). Universities have never cared about jobs for their graduates. In fact they care little even for their Bachelor graduates, as they view them as little more than Junior graduates. You are cannon fodder in the University system until you at least have a Masters degree;
3). This is a problem as I have always believed that most University students really want to be prepared for employment and not for advanced degrees;
4). Actually, most Universities teach rather grudgingly. They would rather do research and publication and invention. That's where the money is, the prestige is, and all the aspirational language is oriented towards. Students? Great needy masses of humanity! Who really wants that?
5). So quit teaching and quit pretending. Downsize, become exclusively research facilities, and stop doing a bad job of teaching. Let the vocational schools teach because they have their hearts in it.
6). Also, those vocational schools? They don't pretend that "being smart" makes you a qualified teacher, which is a distinct profession. This is an endemic problem in Universities where you have hordes of professors who are unqualified and behaviourally unsuited to teach. Yet the Universities hire those sorts by the thousands, because "they have a Ph.D"!