Then what do their gradautes do, after graduation?

Good job of reporting. Still wondering what happens after graduation — still a mystery.

Do graduates hold up signs — “Will Critique For Food?” Join the family business? Deign to go to law school, after saving the world? Join the Starbucks army?

Art D., at 6:55 am EDT on April 11, 2006

Have you seen my career lately?

There are too many people in higher ed who pride themselves on never having solied their hands at an honest day’s work to ever entrust them with anyone else’s career aspirations. Learning how to start a career is like taking a sex ed course at a monastery. The scholar-practitioner model would solve the problem, but higher ed is a littler light on the practioner side. Adjuncts bring this to the table, but the union hacks fight any expansion of that role. If only the masses were as ignorant as they once were, that scholarly model would still hold water. But most companies would rather go to consulting firms for their research. Even the more scholarly forms of research are more often provided by think tanks outside of higher ed. R & D does much of its own research. I wonder how much longer the scholar model can rest on the backs of a handful of productive and brilliant researchers? The scholar-practitioner model brings that real world connection to the monastery. No wonder the monks are in flight.

sillyone, at 9:30 am EDT on April 11, 2006

A Sad State Of Affairs

It is a sad state of affairs when even our premier liberal arts institutions go the way of career prep. I am a firm believer in the Liberal Arts Experience. I feel that it makes for a more well rounded student rather than one that knows primarily one subject or field.

Liberal Arts education, however, is not for everyone. Thus the differentiation in a career prep institution vs a liberal arts insititution. The day once was where there were Universities, A & Ms, and Teaching Colleges. A student chose which path to go based on career goals. As the differentiations dropped the lines became cloudy over the years. Now, as all insitutions of higher education compete for students those lines are virtually non existent.

I do not think that we should go back to the days of old but we do need to better inform students and parents. I think that there needs to be clarity as to what a liberal arts degree and what a career prep degree are. Students most often think that a diploma is a diploma is a diploma. I think we do a good job of putting the information out there but assume the student or potential student knows the difference in a Liberal Arts degree and a career prep degree.

Finally, yes the student is our consumer to a certain extent and being student friendly and student conscious is a great thing, however, to allow students to degridate the quality of education is not acceptable. Too often I hear student complain about Gen Ed requirements and I have seen the number of those requirements drop and drop and drop as a result. The outcry from employers are that our students are not well rounded enough. Critical thinking,problem solving, carrying on an intelligent conversation outside of the work place, basically a well educated individual, are all qualities that employers desire.

So in fact in the interest of student friendliness we are not helping the student in the long run. In fact are doing them a disservice by not providing well rounded education.

DavidShaw, at 9:55 am EDT on April 11, 2006

Maybe it is worth noting that at real schools, investment banks, and consulting firms recruit on campuses, and if a career development office wants to be successful they must convince these firms to take their campus seriously, and offer interviews to many students (not just the friends of the president.) At a minimum, this is a practical way of measuring the performance of one of these offices. Unfortunately sine most career advisors have never held “real” jobs (that is, outside of academe, with a real career track) they are petty much clueless.

Larry, at 10:25 am EDT on April 11, 2006

Liberal Arts in Illiberal Times

Career centers hopefully discuss the application of the liberal arts orientation and skills in the traditional job marketplace and in our current illiberal socio-political milieu. This means also showing kids how to keep their wits, passions, and values in tact while trying to get paid. This is not an easy balance, especially for students trained to think broadly, deeply.

Faculty, too often, were students who sought refuge from the marketplace by replacing it with the academic feudal system. In any case, whether a traditional job or feudal patronage, I hope the value of being fully human (rathter than an automaton) and passing the spirit of their liberal tradition lives on in whatever these students do and the manner in which they carry out their life decisions.

Papillon, at 10:45 am EDT on April 11, 2006

Alley Cat Ethics

Artie, has there ever been a conversation regarding the real world vs. “the world of the mind” that did not end with a description of the evil and unethical business person? You are so right! Let me offer a few examples:

- Massive waste of government spending, often sending thousands of dollars to those who should not be receiving them; - Unethical and dishonest practices leading to consumer fraud; - Preying on the inexperienced and uneducated with little interest in the customer; - No real free market — industries that support themselves by controlling disreputable politicians to line their own pockets and to force out competitors - Fat union stewards who feed off the new workers to better the situation of the oldest and least productive workers; - Mislabeled products and services, exaggerated claims and arrogant customer service staff. - Chronic mismanagement, which invariably results in costs that are passed on to consumer;- Slick operators that talk their customers in to acquiring massive debts to by into schemes that have no guarantee of ever returning their investment.

Sound like anyone you know, Artie?

sillyone, at 11:00 am EDT on April 11, 2006

Career Prep vs. Liberal Arts

Full disclosure: I am a liberal arts graduate. In fact, I hold advanced degrees in the arts. I also, for the last 10 years, have held a job outside of the academy. Was it easy, no. Would I have benefited from a more comprehensive education, yes.

Ironically, my liberal education, with all manner of literature, language studies, psychology, speech, writing, etc. was actually pretty conservative. That is, while I learned to critically evaluate a situation, I was not educated in some of the more fundamental aspects of business management: how to run a spreadsheet, project, budget, etc. I was not encouraged to explore the important world of IT technologies (do you know what an ERP system is?). I was, in fact, hampered by my “exposure” to critical thinking.

Was I able to overcome it? To a point. I am still playing catch-up in some areas. Would I change my ability to think and analyze, no. Would I have liked just one course, not in “life” skills like time management (please, don’t bother me with that) but in basic business exposure.

I am a much better candidate with a liberal arts underpinning that supports specific business skills.

How about you?

http://www.rwjacksons.com/GradeEaze.html

B Jackson, at 1:55 pm EDT on April 11, 2006

I have enjoyed reading todays thoughts re career prep and Liberal Arts. Very interesting, however as a very successful career consultant of long standing, the first question I would ask is this: What is the mind set of an individual who thinks they need a L. A. degree to begin with?

robert parkins, at 1:05 pm EDT on April 12, 2006

Robert you ask: What is the mind set of an individual who thinks they need a L. A. degree to begin with?

I beg your indulgence as you raise the most important issue:

A career is truly what an individual needs to make a living; a truly educated populace is what humanity needs to keep on living.

True liberal education is not a mind set; nor can we isolate it as mere “critical thinking.”

Further, many schools claim to teach it, no one has cared to ask whether any have been successful or whether it’s possible to teach a “true education", anymore than we can promise that an ab roller will give your abdominals a six pack. A certain number of achieved credits do not guarantee that you have undergone meaningful change due to your schooling.

To ask what a “true education” (liberal arts) is, and to wonder why it is so important, is the first step toward the liberation from the “mind set” that has been packaged and sold to us.

If you ask what kind of individual is this that “thinks they need this liberal arts education", why not ask what kind of world it is that you want to live in (or your children to live in), that requires a certain “kind of education.”

What is the purpose and function of education besides filling a resume and getting a job? Is getting a job the reason for our existence?

What is our reason for being?

Yes, you can do the spreadsheets, software programming, cost/benefit analyses, case-briefs, legal and quantitative research and still raise these very “human” issues.

Here’s a simple thought, bumper sticker!

If you think education is expensive try fascism.

1. often Fascism 1. A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism. 2. A political philosophy or movement based on or advocating such a system of government. 2. Oppressive, dictatorial control.

Papillon, at 9:55 pm EDT on April 12, 2006

This thread is kinda old, but for the record I’ll say my piece, as I don’t hear anyone speaking for the students who’ve been through, or are currently, in training. Firstly let me say, there is no practical side of college from what I have seen. The first two years of the majors, I and my friends have experienced, are largely theoretical across the board. I came to college a Electrical Engineering student with some transfer units and was appalled to find just what my community college prof’s had told me to expect. There was no circuit assembly, prototyping or design for the first two years! Stuff that I’d been doing already, designing and wiring small micro circuits, I would have to wade through two years of intense math and physics to touch again. I spoke to the Dean who nicely dismissed my, and my old professor’s, concerns that 4-year universities were running the risk producing EE majors that couldn’t proto-type. The assertion that many recent EE majors can’t design circuits, and don’t even know what a resistive voltage divider is, isn’t mine but my professor’s who happened to work at National Semiconductor and only taught alternating years. It was his job to interview potential engineering candidates with EE degrees, and apparently a lot of them were only hand’s on enough to work the phone. There are exceptions of course in picking up very narrow particular skills (CAD, java, Mathmatica, etc) that are taught in upper division courses after sufficient theory has been covered to introduce tools. But these are not always matched in the industry, but the point of college nearest I can tell is to teach you how to teach yourself and provide you with incredible resources for advancing your education. I worked in the Engineering School of UCSC for a year and a half providing tech support to professors and staff. I met some incredible people, learned more about practical IT than I can say, and met professors working on some inspiring stuff. Was any of this practical, sure the staff of the university is run as a business with high standards for service and security. Is it normal for students to take jobs on campus, relatively. The picture I’m trying to paint here is that although there are practical things being worked on it isn’t till late within the four years. Community Studies majors often start up non-profits, or Freedom of Information Act requests, film majors collaberate on projects, and so forth. All of the departments, except perhaps my newfound department Philosophy, have practical appliactions that are mirrored in the ‘Commercial world’. Hell, Philosophy even engenders good argument, logical assesment, information usage and writing skills—all essential items for mass media copy or just Internet copy. The problem is the administrators are butting into the departments too much and slashing entire departments, oh Journalism how we miss thee!, to maintain their own high salaries as the ‘product quality’—classes offered and how full they are— plummet. Further we have delusions that the University isn’t a theoretical place beginning to end, we engender new ideas where R&D $$$’s dare not go and provide the next generation of intellectual resources and arguments. I had a professor that co-authored the idea of Dark Matter and another who empirically demonstrated that Aristotle’s adjective-based psychology (that we have {X} personality traits all the time) is inconsistent with modern psychological experiments. There is nothing wrong with the Liberal Arts model, I don’t even see where it stops, even my friends in Economics and Business still talk about Weber and game theory and all sorts of other largely theoretical concerns and how those are derived into practice. Ahh there is an Accounting minor I remember now, that indeed sounds very practical and likely is, but there is still a bit of theory anyway—what is it to ‘balance the books’? heheh The issue with broadening the education of an engineering student is plain and simple, by the way. At UCSC they have ~27 classes to complete for the major and then a minimum of 9 gen. eds, which we all do. Each class is only 5 units, (27+9)5=180 and 180 is graduation,and only a couple of overlaps between the major and gen ed’s is possible. There is no time in many of the rigorous schedules (like Bio MCD) for liberal arts broadening, if thats what is meant by a career prep, then so be it. If Bachelors are to stay 4 year degrees this is necessary, honestly I think engineering opportunities ought to be more accessible to high school students—though I have a million suggestions before that.

On an above post about the changing face of IT and the cool sounding history major CEO:I read about a few years ago the early years of computer science and how it was a hobby that all sorts of researchers learned and went on to become our programming gurus and OSS gods. This old school crew never studied comp. sci because it was too young, they just picked it up. Now there are 4 or so ‘weeder’ classes for computer science that determine who will be able to do the major, and it seemed to trim out those without prior experience or extreme will—the math weeded me not this =).

Damn Wilcox IT contractor for last 2 years (GNU/Linux dork)UCSC BA, Philosophy (Logic)

Damn Wilcox, As a college grad of 1.5 months... at UC Santa Cruz, at 4:00 pm EDT on May 8, 2006