Let's Redesign College!

[Wahoo Redux]

On another thread I tried to imagine what A College of Insurance Underwriting would look like if we accede to the demand that we calibrate education to students' professional careers.  Obviously I can only speculate about industries or careers that I am familiar with.

This is what I came up with:

Underwriting is mostly just plugging numbers into a computer program.  All the calculations are predetermined by actuarial science, so in a way a well trained monkey could be an underwriter, but insurance corporations still want a thinking human intellect somewhere in the equation. 

Theoretically the underwriter should be able to tell the salesperson that, no, the risk is too great, or no, you've promised them too much or, no, you were down-sold on the premium so sorry, you do not get a commission because I as the mighty underwriter have determined that this contract is not solid business---but you can guess how often that happens with these aggressive, macho corporate insurance salespeople (anyone ever seen Glenngarry Glen Ross?).

Companies would like to have underwriters with a college degree but can't always find these people.  Companies also like underwriters who have worked as analysts or at least processors and, at best case scenarios, have also worked as administrative reps in customer service. 

So what kind of education should this person have now that we have eliminated all this annoying box checking?

I conceive of a single 2 month academic calendar followed by a 3 month internship.

The quarter would consist of 6 hours of class-time 5X a week (the credit hours designation is unimportant now) with the understanding that students would do an additional 10 hours of studying on their own time and working PT for the corporation to gain a little hands-on skill.

Students would receive a modest stipend for attending free college (all of this is paid for by the insurance industry with government support because this is very cheap college education) and housing in well equipped dormitories actually located in the insurance company headquarters and meals comped in the cafeteria----we are living, breathing, and eating insurance at this point.  Not only are we educating underwriters, we are giving students important professional context and contacts and, of course, molding them into fabulous working machines.

Topics covered during coursework:
* Essentials of grammar, syntax, and sentence structure
* Business letter writing, report writing, and email etiquette
* Visual rhetoric and PowerPoint presentation / best forensic speech practices
-----you'd need someone like me, but the doctorate or even a master's would be superfluous; actually a college degree would be superfluous as long as the instructor could pass a simple grammar and formatting text.

* Basic insurance law & fraud
-----taught by a "professional fellow," probably one of the JDs who works in the corporation's legal division

* Basic H.R., best management practices, accounting and P.R.
-----a seminar team-taught by various executives from each of these offices (more professional contacts!)

* A practicum on insurance analysis & underwriting
-----obviously writing a few contracts and then shadowing the professionals.

Really, that is all one needs to make a great worker bee in the insurance industry.  Actually, our underwriters are now a bit over-qualified to plug numbers into a computer, so we've done a great job of educating them and they are poised to climb the corporate ladder if they so choose. 

Each industry, from computer programming to waste management, would have their own micro-colleges.  Sorry, you engineers and future doctors and advertising people will still need the bachelor's degree but we've shed that annoying lib arts core so you'll only need to attend something like 2 years, all on the government's dime, and the resources for your education will be EXCELLENT!  Many of your classes will be taught by eager, well-qualified volunteers, BTW.

We will also have reinstated the normal college system for you future school teachers.

After an underwriting bachelor's is conferred, the underwriter will do a 2 to 3 month paid internship, and the best companies (MetLife and the like) will require that their underwriters spend time as analysts before grasping the brass ring that they spent an entire 5 months being educated for. The most ambitious could attend night classes in finance and business management to get a second bachelor's to train the next generation of executives.

It all works out, Polly, and you would be even happier to know that, now that we have closed our massive, over-inflated colleges with their esoteric research interests that no one is really interested in in the first place, we have a lot more money for K-12.

Worker bees of the world unite!  Hyperbole rules!!

[Wahoo Redux]

That was actually pretty fun, so I've been thinking about other fields / careers / disciplines that I know a tiny bit about and could speculate about what a career-oriented college would look like.

I am considering that all students are now tracked into their future careers starting at about age 12, and that secondary education is rigorous and equitable enough so that everyone is satisfied in this orderly New World Order.  In other words, you are plugged into the system at the beginning of adolescence and it works out to the best of all possible worlds.

First of all, we've done away with all box-checking.  Things are fast, cheap, and streamlined.

For instance, creative writers need not take math, science, or any other boring field not directly related to creativity except for a year of history, a course in psychology, and a fine arts or music class.

Engineers, classical musicians, and future doctors would all need at least 3 years intensive post-secondary study in their future fields, but the rest of us could get a "bachelor's" degree in as much time as it takes and no more, be it 6 months, 1 year, or 2 years----no bachelor's should take longer than that.  We have no designation of "associate's degree" unless it is strictly a technical or functionary degree (programmer or paralegal, for instance).

What about a College of Pre-Law?  I think we have some lawyers among us, perhaps they could chime in.

We have determined at age 12 who would make the best lawyers.  There is no reason to study any field unrelated to your careers after high school (since anything you are exposed to in h.s. is enough exposure) and these people have been carefully groomed to take on the mantle of the law.  I don't think we'd want anybody under the age of 20 as an attorney, so our students would have to attend school at least to age 18.

After that I think we can siphon through undergrads in about two years and have them ready for the  3 arduous years of law school.

My father was an attorney, and I was always amazed at how much American and British history he knew----he had to know where the laws came from and why.  So a rigorous year of historical study, Brit and American, is in order.

I once heard dad talking to a young law student about the importance of being able to write, understanding adverbs and adjectives and grammar, and writing is most of what an attorney will do.  So I would suggest two solid years of advanced written research and argumentation.

We'd want at least a semester of math, I think, and then a semester (maybe a year's) worth of logic.

As my mother's legal guardian I have dealt a lot in the last 3 years with lawyers, living wills, and estate oversight, and lawyers read a good deal of difficult material, so I would suggest a semester of intense, difficult reading materials---literature would be good for this.  I would suggest the sonnets of Shakespeare and Donne, and some modernist writers, Wallace Stevens, Faulkner, and Joyce, to really hone the hermeneutic thinking of tomorrow's lawyers.

Likewise, challenging problems from philosophy---Aristotle, Zizek, and Kant maybe?  Maybe there are better philosophers to read to challenge the cognitive ability of tomorrow's lawyers?

And, of course, two full years of speech and forensics, maybe even an improv class, for courtroom persona.

If our tracking is good enough we can also determine which lawyers will do patent law (so perhaps a year of engineering?), medical malpractice (year of anatomy?), constitutional law (more history, obviously), estate law (not sure how we would prepare this one...), immigration law (2 years of Spanish or another foreign language), and so a third year of pre-law might be in order.

What else am I missing?

Anyway, how should we redesign college?  You can go all reductio ad adsurdum (or maybe this is not so absurd) as I have done, or make a serious statement.

[polly_mer]

Have you considered taking a break from the fora and doing something fun with your family?

You mentioned having a lot of books to read.  Now might be a good time to work through the backlog.

I'm happy to have a serious discussion, but this isn't it.

I'd be happy to have a fun discussion, but this isn't it.  This looks like someone needs to lay off the booze and take the lampshade off their head.

[Wahoo Redux]

Polly, are you sure you're one to talk?

[HomunculusParty]

Have you considered taking a break from the fora and doing something fun with your family?

You mentioned having a lot of books to read.  Now might be a good time to work through the backlog.

I'm happy to have a serious discussion, but this isn't it.

I'd be happy to have a fun discussion, but this isn't it.  This looks like someone needs to lay off the booze and take the lampshade off their head.

I don't know, I thought it was pretty fun. And especially because I thought the "lay off the booze" comment was a completely inappropriate ad hominem, here's my contribution to the thread!

How could my undergrad electrical engineering degree have been streamlined? Hmmm...

• I took way too much math because I was also getting a math degree, so I could have dialed back everything post linear algebra, I think. Presumably in this ideal world engineering-track students would be prepped through calculus in high school, so we could get away with really minimal math for engineers. Check!
• Engineering students of all kinds should be highly specialized very early, so they don't waste valuable time learning things they won't use on the job. So, e.g., power-focused EEs can skip all that signal processing stuff, etc. So long, useless learning!
• Intro physics and chemistry? I think we can do away with those. I don't need to know any more than I learned in high school about valence levels or frictionless planes. EEs who will be delving into semiconductors would be an exception, of course. But their class should be tightly specialized to what they'll need to know on the job. No more of these wasteful PHYS 1100 courses required for students from multiple disciplines.
• Toss out all those useless humanities. No one needs to know how to write anymore and as we're often reminded on these boards, the alleged demand for "soft skills" is a hoax. The one exception: one class in the history of science where STEM students will learn a catechism of 5 examples of processes of discovery or invention that proceeded smoothly from a brilliant inspiration of one great man (definitely a man) to a familiar household object you use each day, AND 3 examples of engineering disasters you can gravely recite to inform people why your skill set is so important. (You will need those examples because you never took a course in persuasive, evidence-based writing. That's a "soft skill" you can easily learn on the job!)

Cracked it!

[mamselle]

Back to the usual "other side," though...(n=1):

A younger friend went to a large R1 with a strong science program. She did the usual required Bio-Physics-Chem programs as an undergrad, thinking she might go into environmental engineering. Her dad was an economist, teaching in a university in another country, where she'd been born; the family had lived in the US for awhile when he taught here, then moved back to their original country later. So, she's tri-lingual (her mom's from yet another country) and just married a fellow from yet a fourth country, and they're bringing up the kids to be fluent in as many languages as they hear in a day (up to four, sometimes).

Had she only stuck with the sciences, or maybe the added couple of economics courses (for policy advisement preparation) she'd probably be in a rainforest somewhere measuring soil sequestration or something.

But along the way, she also took a couple of government courses, and a couple in international relations. That led to an MA in economics and a doctorate in econ and governmental policy, combined (she had a grant for a very specific research program that took her to two more schools for her follow-up work).

Which have stood her in good stead now that she's working for OECD in yet a fifth country, doing advisement in environmental policy and forecasting economic futures based on same.

How would such a narrow preparation as you describe ever have allowed her to create the base from which this rich career has grown?

M. 

[Wahoo Redux]

Have you considered taking a break from the fora and doing something fun with your family?

You mentioned having a lot of books to read.  Now might be a good time to work through the backlog.

I'm happy to have a serious discussion, but this isn't it.

I'd be happy to have a fun discussion, but this isn't it.  This looks like someone needs to lay off the booze and take the lampshade off their head.

I don't know, I thought it was pretty fun. And especially because I thought the "lay off the booze" comment was a completely inappropriate ad hominem

Eh.  I guess.  It's kind of a '50s cliche to dance with a lampshade on one's head.  B'sides, I'm a teetotaler and spend all my time with my family now anyway.  But Polly is pretty funny when she lets loose, I'll give her that.

I just thought it was pretty ironic for Polly to tell anyone to lay off the Forum.

I've got one what stumps me: Librarian.

How in the heck-fire could you possibly streamline the undergrad education for that profession?

[ergative]

Back to the usual "other side," though...(n=1):

A younger friend went to a large R1 with a strong science program. She did the usual required Bio-Physics-Chem programs as an undergrad, thinking she might go into environmental engineering. Her dad was an economist, teaching in a university in another country, where she'd been born; the family had lived in the US for awhile when he taught here, then moved back to their original country later. So, she's tri-lingual (her mom's from yet another country) and just married a fellow from yet a fourth country, and they're bringing up the kids to be fluent in as many languages as they hear in a day (up to four, sometimes).

Had she only stuck with the sciences, or maybe the added couple of economics courses (for policy advisement preparation) she'd probably be in a rainforest somewhere measuring soil sequestration or something.

But along the way, she also took a couple of government courses, and a couple in international relations. That led to an MA in economics and a doctorate in econ and governmental policy, combined (she had a grant for a very specific research program that took her to two more schools for her follow-up work).

Which have stood her in good stead now that she's working for OECD in yet a fifth country, doing advisement in environmental policy and forecasting economic futures based on same.

How would such a narrow preparation as you describe ever have allowed her to create the base from which this rich career has grown?

M.

I mean, yeah This is what keeps going through my head. If we limit the requirements for a degree to classes that directly serve a particular career, we rob our students of flexibility--both in case they decide they want to pursue a future career after they leave college, and also in case they change their minds when they see what's available once they get there. I didn't know what my field was when I started college, and it was only because I had the time to look around while fulfilling breadth requirements that I was able to discover it and fall in love. And even now, my current department gets a sizable percentage of our majors because our first-year intro course is a requirement for something much more well-known, and then students who thought they wanted to major in our neighbor discover us and switch over.

Regarding creative writing majors who need no breadth requirements except history and psychology: that leaves a lot of creative writing underserved. Look at Greg Egan, who invents entirely new laws of physics in his universes in his Clockwork Rocket trilogy. Look at Sue Burke, who invents new ecologies on her planets in Semiosis and Interference. Look at N. K. Jemisin, who bases her magic system in geology in her Broken Earth trilogy. Look at Maureen McHugh, who has a deeply sophisticated rethinking of political and economic balances in her near future in China Mountain Zhang.

I suppose you could turn this on its head and argue that many of these writers are already specialists in their fields, and didn't set out to be come writers in college. Greg Egan is already a physicist; Sue Burke is already an ecologist. But that means that they have sufficient training in writing to have the flexibility to become creative writers.

The more cross-fertilization between disciplines, the richer and more varied are both the outputs of any one discipline, and also the options available to people who can't ever know exactly what their careers will hold for them. I understand an unwillingness to pretend that we know better what they need than they do, but I also think that if we only require a basic necessity for job credentialling, we're implicitly saying that we agree with the philosophy that focused education for the purpose of making money is the best way to go. And I don't agree with that.

Breadth requirements in multiple disciplines can be made pretty vague (take X credits from the physical sciences, y credits in social sciences, z credits in history or politics . . .), so that leaves a lot of choice up to the student. But as long as they're there, they do ensure not only that students have some degree of flexiblity and exposure beyond what they think as teenagers will be their future. And that is, to me, the purpose of higher education.

[Hegemony]

It doesn't have to be a hypothetical experiment. Many countries outside the U.S. do limit a university education to just one subject. I think the truth of the matter is: there are advantages and disadvantages to both systems.

[dr_codex]

Two thoughts.

A lifetime ago, I did time in a law school admissions office. Students could enter either with a completed degree, or with two years of coursework. There were other paths that required even less preparation, for various qualifying groups. So, pre-law is already with us. If anybody tracked career outcomes comparing the 4-year and 2-year students, I don't know about it. I do know that we had terrible retention for the students who came in with less than 2 years; they may well have been prepared to be lawyers, but they weren't well prepared for law school.

Currently, I teach mostly students earning professional credentials. Indeed, almost all of my students are pursuing the kinds of training that some folks see as the future of higher education, albeit with all of those pesky General Education boxes still to tick. Most of them need that specific credential for about 5 years. (Polly's recurring complaint the Engineering students don't stick with Engineering jobs might resonate here.) Over time, their Bachelor's degree is more valuable than their professional license. You'd never convince the students, or their parents, of that fact during admissions, and it sure isn't how we market ourselves. But the best way to describe the whole process is that while their licenses and stamps will get them jobs, it's the whole degree that launches careers.

Is there pushback against GenEd? You bet there is, both from students and from faculty. But it isn't taken very seriously. We could shift to B.Tech. degrees or AAS degrees, and gut the breadth requirements. For that matter, most of the students don't need a degree at all, and could just go work in their field at less qualified positions and work their ways up. Curiously, neither has happened, nor are they taken seriously except as negotiating postures.

I will concede that if all of American and Canadian secondary and higher education were transformed, so that no child were left behind, we might change to something more like our European counterparts, in which degrees are completed in three years. But the real transformation would need to made by the various professional accreditors, and not by my institution.

One last thought. Institutions of higher education might cling on as places where corporations outsource their on-the-job training. I find that model depressing, especially when governments wind up heavily subsidizing the programs. It is corporate welfare at its least attractive.

[HomunculusParty]

Back to the usual "other side," though...(n=1):

A younger friend went to a large R1 with a strong science program. She did the usual required Bio-Physics-Chem programs as an undergrad, thinking she might go into environmental engineering. Her dad was an economist, teaching in a university in another country, where she'd been born; the family had lived in the US for awhile when he taught here, then moved back to their original country later. So, she's tri-lingual (her mom's from yet another country) and just married a fellow from yet a fourth country, and they're bringing up the kids to be fluent in as many languages as they hear in a day (up to four, sometimes).

Had she only stuck with the sciences, or maybe the added couple of economics courses (for policy advisement preparation) she'd probably be in a rainforest somewhere measuring soil sequestration or something.

But along the way, she also took a couple of government courses, and a couple in international relations. That led to an MA in economics and a doctorate in econ and governmental policy, combined (she had a grant for a very specific research program that took her to two more schools for her follow-up work).

Which have stood her in good stead now that she's working for OECD in yet a fifth country, doing advisement in environmental policy and forecasting economic futures based on same.

How would such a narrow preparation as you describe ever have allowed her to create the base from which this rich career has grown?

M.

I can't tell if you're responding to me or just posting directly below, but my response was not meant to be serious. I'm in the humanities now and deeply satisfied with my work, thanks to all the "useless" coursework I did alongside my engineering degree, which helped me navigate my way through the serious ethical crisis I ended up having with my engineering research.

So I'm the last person who would seriously advocate for stripping down college to the bare minimum. If people want to be technicians, that's great, and I'm all for robust training in the trades to turn out high-status craftspeople. But that's not what college is for.

[polly_mer]

The opportunity costs are large for spending a lot of time doing something that isn't connected to the current goals and then having to do still more later when it turns out the goals changed.

It's one thing to keep flexibility early on for 7-12 grades.  The argument for having paths to choose and explore over being forced onto a specific track resonate with me.  It's quite another thing to keep so much flexibility that people end up being in their thirties and still need additional targeted training to be able to do something that will earn them middle-class money.  Learning to do everything before starting anything in particular is one way to get trapped in the planning for beginning to start to commence the baby steps phase.

The bar keeps rising in terms of what one needs to be able to do to earn middle-class income while keeping up with the changing everything as automation kicks into high gear and more people have college degrees.  At one point, I was heavily scolded on the fora for having a job that didn't require my engineering PhD.  Yep, other people with a master's degree in social science tend to do that job.  However, because I had the skills I had, I could easily drop into that position and convince my provost to pay me about twice the going rate because of the other skills I had. 

The trade-off in higher ed should be more in terms of what someone needs now versus what can be acquired later as part of general living as a middle-class person who has access to workshops and extended training programs.  Turning a four-year degree into a two-year degree is short-sighted. 

Continuing to cling to the idea that a huge dollop of the humanities in college on top of what should have been a huge dollop of the humanities in K-12 is the only way to do it completely ignores the experience of the rest of the world.  While many people take their engineering degrees and promptly do something else, that engineering education is clearly fine in terms of being flexible.  It's not the 2 humanities courses that are really giving those engineers the edge over anyone else.  It's all the other valuable things like problem solving and writing reports out the wazoo.

If someone really can become proficient in something for a direct job in a year, then that year can come at any time, much as 4 years of formal classroom training in something tangential seldom wins over 4 years of direct experience.  The cries in some quarters are quite loud regarding finding out that a college degree means one starts at where the high school graduate started 4 years ago.

I continue to be amazed at the people who claim that what they teach is the most important and yet the evidence in what they can do and have done supports the cruel adage: those who can, do

[Wahoo Redux]

The opportunity costs are large for spending a lot of time doing something that isn't connected to the current goals and then having to do still more later when it turns out the goals changed.

...to keep so much flexibility that people end up being in their thirties and still need additional targeted training to be able to do something that will earn them middle-class money.  Learning to do everything before starting anything in particular is one way to get trapped in the planning for beginning to start to commence the baby steps phase.

You know, Polly-wolly, it may not seem like I respect you, but I do.  I value your commentary.

But it also seems to me that you have very severe ideas and opinions.  You see to be arguing that we can control basic human nature by limiting and tracking people's education 'for their own good.'  Very Orwellian. 

My first couple of years as an undergraduate was spent at my parents' choice of college, recently voted by Forbes (I believe) as the best private college in my home state (a designation that made me roll my eyes so hard I injured my brain).  I transferred to the big, cheap, relatively well respected R-1 state school down the road which I liked much better for a number of reasons. 

Nevertheless I kept in touch with a number of friends (largely by virtue of Facebook) who eventually graduated from the well-respected SLAC with all sorts of degrees conferred, from fine arts to humanities to business to whatever.  Two are now school teachers after doing other jobs.  One went to Harvard Law.  One manages a supermarket.  One was a beer importer for a while and now does something else.  One lives and works in Japan.  One designed T-shirt art for a while but couldn't make enough money and had to do something else.  One works in politics.  My best friend from this time does invoices for minimum wage at a company that sells novelties after getting fired from the same national insurance company I worked for.  Most just do jobs of some kind. 

Most of them changed carriers or got advanced degrees later in life.  Many will change again; few were on any sort of "track." 

According to LinkedIn which is according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average worker currently holds ten different jobs before age forty, and this number is projected to grow. Forrester Research predicts that today's youngest workers ? that's you ? will hold twelve to fifteen jobs in their lifetime. But don't panic you won't hold so many different jobs that you have to go through the whole job search process every year or two!

Humans wander.  Only a few of us know what we want to do or want to get out of life when we are young, maybe not ever.  And not very many know what is best for us, again, particularly when we are young.  As Hegemony posted upstairs, there will axiomatically be benefits and drawbacks to any kind of education (it'd be interested if someone could point to what they are). 

This is why I am dubious about "tracking."

I am also dubious about training young minds with any great depth in secondary schooling.  You want to throw Shakespeare at fifteen-year-olds?  Be my guest.  Want to teach advanced calculus to horny sixteen and seventeen-year-olds?  Not for me.

Yes, I am sure somewhere schools are teaching Shakespeare or the I-Ching or whatever to teenagers, but I'd like to see how that would work in the real world here...and I'd like to see how successful they really are there or wherever.  Americans loooooove to be critical of ourselves, particularly our institutions, which is healthy as long as we don't become FOX news addicts.

And yes, I am very well aware of the standardized testing and where the U.S. ranks compared to other industrialized nations.  I have also taught Chinese students studying English, once for a short time in China.  The one thing my Chinese students valued about our less-than-prestigious exchange program is that they were not force-fed facts all day but asked to work through problems.  I cannot say that this is a fair description for Chinese education, but I do know that we had to explain plagiarism in American colleges to them; the idea that one could simply regurgitate other people's ideas as scholastic work was apparently standard practice in their educational systems. 

Is that, in turn, standard for many educational philosophies around the world?  Maybe someone could comment on that.

And I have to point out that America is not a "hell hole" despite our annoying box-checking education.

But this...

I continue to be amazed at the people who claim that what they teach is the most important and yet the evidence in what they can do and have done supports the cruel adage: those who can, do

...is frustration verging over into rage.  Temper, temper, my dear.