Early this year, Susan Adams published an article at Forbes related to college education.
It calls a college professor's job the least stressful among professionals. Well, the stress level depends not solely on a job description but on many psychological, mental and physical characteristics of an individual. Let's rather take a look at how useful are our college educators to their students and by extension to our society. Are they trying to create more good members of our society? Do they teach something which will assist college grads in the job market? Are they able to provide students with any valuable knowledge, something good to utilize later on? Do they try to develop a mindset, skills or desire to get them, logic or anything else which is supposed to equip their auditoriums with methods of life-enhancing - both for themselves and the society at large? I can go on and on. Do they educate people on how to make living and survive in the real world? Do they even know something about the real world?
As you have already guessed, my answer would be unequivocal "NO" for any of the above. And I am going to prove my point right here.
The so called "academia" is supposed, mainly, to play a social function of research and education providers to the rest of us and to all other industries. Some people may even argue that academia is one of the main movers of a civilization. In this post I will leave the topics of research and civilization alone and concentrate solely on an education function. Think about it. Education means preparing someone to become a useful, knowledgeable and independent member of society. What our colleges do instead, and charge outrageous money for that? Being part of academia, they mostly supply a set of courses which in the best case would be more or less purposeful for someone with a goal of becoming a member of the same academia, and in the worst case, plainly useless. Why is that? Because curriculum is created by people who stepped out of real life a long time ago - or even never placed their foot into it. That's why so many of them are pushing for the liberal or even communist-like agenda. That's why it's so difficult for a person with conservative views to find a college teaching job - in academia, which is supposed to embrace any diversity, including political. That's why so many of college grads come out of their schools brainwashed with socialistic ideas and only later in life, after being able to make their own observations, begin drifting to more realistic standpoints. But again, in this post I am not going to jump into a political discussion.
Before you accuse me of being an advocate for converting colleges into vocational schools or neglecting the importance of theory, I will tell you that it's not what I am proposing. I think most of us do need to absorb and comprehend the theoretical aspects of what we do. But, outside academia, we need a much smaller portion of theoretical knowledge than colleges are feeding their customers - and students are their customers. And for much lower price. How many times have you heard: "All I need for my job I either learned on the street or directly right on the job"? Yes, being street-smart is a big help in life. But you would not learn the skills of an IT developer, dentist, financial analyst or nurse on the street. Would you acquire them at a college? Hell no. You will get them ON THE JOB.
One of my family members is a successful young professional in the field of law. He says that out of three years in his (considered pretty good) law school, the only valuable time was four-month practice in a prosecutor's office. A friend of mine, who is a PE (professional engineer), says that she could not remember a single thing from her college years which could be applied to her work as an engineering consultant. My own experience as IT professional tells me about the same. A lot of people say they had plenty of fun during the school years. Some say their college education has broaden their horizon. Some would assert they are much more rounded-up and better talkers.Thank God! But is it supposed to cost so much as it does?
Now the school cost is a separate issue and I may address it in some other time. At this moment we're taking about applicability of college education, which is rather close to zero. And I am not even touching the subject of liberal arts, medieval history or history of various ethnicitis, Shakespearean theater and other maybe interesting but rather rarely utilized courses. How many specialists on Rembrandt's art could be employed in our country? Maybe a few lucky hundred...How many accounting clerks, editorial assistants, sales and marketing people, management consultants and folks working in every imaginable field literature majors? Their name is legion.
I know that everyone with a tenure or people on the tenure track will viciously attack this viewpoint. But let's formulate a simple question: why do we need them? Why do students need them? And why do we have to pay their salaries - either directly, in private colleges, or through the taxes, in public ones?
In fact the colleges go into the right direction by increasing the percentage of adjunct professors in their faculties. During the last 20 years, the absolute number of full professors increased by 30% but their percentage in the faculties decrease in half, from 45% to less then 25%. Good trend but without the right thing in mind. Colleges are trying to cut cost. And to better handle their faculty members if they are not cutting it. The goal should be to attract as many successful professionals to teach the students. After all, pretty soon - and in every imaginable filed - they will constitute the pool of people who will serve as creators of our future as a country.
There could be a million solutions to do that. Students could go for practice, or internship, into real organizations for a few months and than take a month of theoretical or horizon-opening courses. Or they can be at the practice for four days a week and spend one day at the Alma mater. This is a plain technical issue. But steering in this direction should benefit everyone: students, their parents, companies, entire society and eventually even colleges themselves.
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