Existential Crisis

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by Kizmet, Oct 2, 2019.

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  1. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

  2. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Unfortunately for many institutions, the former now seems to require the latter.
     
    Vonnegut likes this.
  3. heirophant

    heirophant Well-Known Member

    Degreeinfo is evidence of that. Universities have been offering programs for working adults for a generation or more. Night-school, part-time enrollment, DL, prior learning assessments, all kinds of innovations are already out there in the market place. That will only grow, but it needn't be an existential crisis for higher education. It might involve changes that the professors don't like though, and most discussion of higher education among higher education professionals always seems to revolve around the interests of higher education professionals. Student voices are largely absent from these discussions. So if higher education really wants to adapt to a changing marketplace, it needs to pay more attention to the needs of its customers. (Students and those who employ them.)

    True. Again, Degreeinfo is living proof of that. It's why many of us contemplated DL in the first place.

    Suggesting that higher education for adults probably needs to be more skills-based than it currently is, and less about producing an "educated individual". That suggests something different than conventional degree programs. Individual classes in things like in-demand software packages, coherent certificate programs in more involved skills (Kizmet's welding might be one of those) and degree programs, sans most of the general ed (except maybe for literacy and basic numerancy), for adult learners who want to enter an entirely new professional field like engineering.

    If we are going to be placing more emphasis on individual classes and on certificates, then there needs to be correspondingly less emphasis on degrees. We need to stop dividing the population into "educated" people with bachelors degrees and "uneducated" people who don't have a BA. That's just foolish and the perceived social status of becoming one of the supposedly more sophisticated "educated people" is what drives hordes of people to earn degrees that they don't really need (or even want).

    Understandable.

    The main argument for the "producing educated people" general education stereotype was that college introduced students to the intellectual heritage, to the accumulated product of the generations of scholars, creators and thinkers who came before us. But today, universities seem to have the exact opposite agenda, existing to subvert and deconstruct the intellectual heritage with "hermeneutics of suspicion" and to disconnect today's students from any feeling of identification with a supposedly irredeemably evil past.

    I'm not convinced that employers are typically looking for intellectuals, let alone today's anti-intellectuals. They want people to perform particular tasks (and not make waves doing it). That suggests that universities need to be consulting with employers to determine what it is that employers want new hires to know, then offer classes and short programs in those things.

    One problem is that what employers want employees to know today isn't necessarily what they will want tomorrow. So skills-training should be short, flexible and to-the-point. It can't be something that requires 4+ years of a student's time.

    One of the beauties of this is that community colleges would seem to be well placed to offer what's needed. They aren't allowed to award bachelors degrees or above, but that leaves them free to offer individual classes and certificates. And these colleges are often better atuned to the needs of local employers than the more aloof prestige universities are.
     
    Helpful2013 likes this.
  4. Helpful2013

    Helpful2013 Active Member

    I am sad at the state of higher education in the West. The university is something that I love, but that is in deep distress, mostly self-inflicted.

    I like community colleges because they don’t have time for the nonsense that more prestigious universities have allotted themselves. In my experience, they are far less focused on politics and trendy recreation of society, and more focused on delivery of education (gasp!). On my rather wide-ranging journey of learning and teaching, I attended classroom courses at three junior colleges, and also took numerous vocational training courses that were run through the community college system in California. I think highly of what community colleges offer.

    In Britain, one of the features of the undergraduate package that I like is the ‘alternate access route.’ In other words, many university programs offer a wee certificate and a medium-sized diploma, both of which are staged components of the bachelor’s degree. A prospective student that doesn’t have the grades or background to enter the bachelor’s degree directly can enter the certificate program, prove themselves, and upon finishing the certificate, gain access to the degree program. It also allows one to complete the degree in stages, rather like the American A.A., or simply to stop after the certificate. For those concerned about quality of instruction or prestige, the certificate, diploma, and degree offer the same instruction provided by the same people. University of London has a remarkable selection of these ladder-like offerings.

    Could not agree more.

    I agree, but for the use of the word, ‘customer.’ For all that that applies during the admissions phase where one is seeking the right program, I think that the recasting of admitted students as consumers or customers has been disastrous for higher education. Far too many entitled students buck the marking/grading system because they believe they’re paying for, rather than working for, a passing grade. You’re quite right, though, that many universities are abysmally lacking in concern over what they’re equipping people to accomplish with the education they provide, and far more interested in what they get out of it. I think that the university side of that equation is more concerned about the benefit to administrators (a ballooning population) rather than faculty (a proportionally shrinking one). That condescending institutional attitude is all part and parcel of the self-inflicted distress I mentioned at the beginning of my post.
     

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