Gen ed problems and future outlook

[mleok]

Why shouldn't they wander around aimlessly for a couple of more years?  Wandering is good.

Who said we should provide direction to them?  I embrace the "individualist" ideal.

Who said we should give anyone explicit instructions on how to live life?  Keep your instructions to yourself.

People have a right to wander.  In fact, I think it is very good to wander.  I certainly never imagined I'd be doing what I am now doing.  It actually kind of surprises me whenever I think about it.

I once met Alan Gilbert, who would go on to be the youngest conductor (and then resign) of the NY Philharmonic, at a summer music camp.  That guy had a trajectory (both his parents played in the philharmonic he would later lead) even back then.  But he is unusual. 

The only problem with wandering is that sometimes students incur debt without a degree----but they are still the ones who made the choice, poorly informed or otherwise.  I think the answer to work to bring down the cost of college, not desolve half the curriculum.

I have no idea what you are on about half the time, Marshy.

If people choose to wander, that's fine. That doesn't mean the system should be set up to require people to take courses not remotely related to or needed for their major.  I embrace the "individualist" ideal.

In a cross thread link, people have the right to choose to wander, on their own dime. But, they should also have the right to be focused on their specific goals. I have yet to see any evidence that general education requirements at the college level achieves outcomes that are worth the clear financial and opportunity costs that it imposes on students. Given what I have seen about the level of motivation of students who take such required general education classes, I don't think anyone whose jobs are not dependent on the continued existence of such general education requirements care.

[Wahoo Redux]

Why shouldn't they wander around aimlessly for a couple of more years?  Wandering is good.

Who said we should provide direction to them?  I embrace the "individualist" ideal.

Who said we should give anyone explicit instructions on how to live life?  Keep your instructions to yourself.

People have a right to wander.  In fact, I think it is very good to wander.  I certainly never imagined I'd be doing what I am now doing.  It actually kind of surprises me whenever I think about it.

I once met Alan Gilbert, who would go on to be the youngest conductor (and then resign) of the NY Philharmonic, at a summer music camp.  That guy had a trajectory (both his parents played in the philharmonic he would later lead) even back then.  But he is unusual. 

The only problem with wandering is that sometimes students incur debt without a degree----but they are still the ones who made the choice, poorly informed or otherwise.  I think the answer to work to bring down the cost of college, not desolve half the curriculum.

I have no idea what you are on about half the time, Marshy.

If people choose to wander, that's fine. That doesn't mean the system should be set up to require people to take courses not remotely related to or needed for their major.  I embrace the "individualist" ideal.

In a cross thread link, people have the right to choose to wander, on their own dime. But, they should also have the right to be focused on their specific goals. I have yet to see any evidence that general education requirements at the college level achieves outcomes that are worth the clear financial and opportunity costs that it imposes on students. Given what I have seen about the level of motivation of students who take such required general education classes, I don't think anyone whose jobs are not dependent on the continued existence of such general education requirements care.

If they are taxpayers and tuition-payers they are on their own dime.

Financial costs I will give you, simply because we make college longer with gen eds.  I might argue that for those who are still "wandering," opportunity comes with gen eds.

Again, this all comes back to what we want from education.

If finance and opportunity costs are what is important, should we reduce college down to career training?  We could do the same with secondary ed too, when you think about it.  Why not?

[mleok]

If they are taxpayers and tuition-payers they are on their own dime.

That's simply not true, and you know it. Most students do not pay enough in taxes to cover the cost of subsidizing their education, more so those who spend all their time "wandering."

[jimbogumbo]

Here's a short (I hope) view of what I think is wrong with K-12 and gen ed at most colleges. I'm going to use what I know as an example. There was an  excellent comparison of US, German and Japanese math classes in a TIMMS via extensive video analysis. 8th grade level. The US and German teachers were not that different, not in a good way. They both focused far more on lower level topics and resorted to explaining how when students were stuck. The Japanese teachers uniformly focused on higher level concepts, did not explain how when students were stuck, and had high expectations for the students explaining in writing how they achieved their solutions. All work for the class period was kept on the board so everyone could refer back to earlier work as well as compare and contrast solutions.

In cognitive psych language the teachers were not afraid of cognitive dissonance, and expected that students would engage in purposeful struggle. That's a major reason that SE Asian students do much better than US students (as well as what mleok stated about a rigid sequencing of topics for the entire country, which really makes it easier for teachers). Japanese teachers also have much more time to plan and there is a national expectation that they will create much better lessons.

Even among high scoring countries however there are significant differences (see Singapore vs Japan as an example). Much more focus on routine in Singapore classrooms, but still very high expectations for all students.
Japan by contrast has almost all the drill and kill done outside the public school math classroom in the after school drilling almost all students do.

By the time students get to us a huge percentage expect to be taught without having to learn because of the focus on teacher explanation in the US rather than students being required to have their own agency in the process. Those problems, imho, will not be addressed easily whether we have a gen ed core or not.

[mleok]

Financial costs I will give you, simply because we make college longer with gen eds.  I might argue that for those who are still "wandering," opportunity comes with gen eds.

Again, I have no issue with people being given the option to "wander," I just question whether it should be required of everyone.

Again, this all comes back to what we want from education.

If finance and opportunity costs are what is important, should we reduce college down to career training?  We could do the same with secondary ed too, when you think about it.  Why not?

We don't require every student to have a higher education, and general education requirements increase the cost of entry and the opportunity cost of attending college, so perhaps we should think about that as well. The reality is that the vast majority of students view the opportunity and real cost of attending college as being primarily justified by career training, so why do we require them to fulfill a litany of general education requirements when their benefit is unclear?

[Wahoo Redux]

If they are taxpayers and tuition-payers they are on their own dime.

That's simply not true, and you know it. Most students do not pay enough in taxes to cover the cost of subsidizing their education, more so those who spend all their time "wandering."

I knew that someone would play the pedantic game as a debate point.  Of course 18-year-olds do not pay in taxes what their education costs, for pete's sake.

If you want to get to it, tax burdens fall disproportionately on the 1% and corporate America.  Perhaps the children of Wall Street and big pharma should get free rides?

And that is not the point anyway.  If you are a working American you will be paying into the system for the rest of your life.  Your tax dollars will subsidize education for, hopefully, decades. 

[Wahoo Redux]

We don't require every student to have a higher education, and general education requirements increase the cost of entry and the opportunity cost of attending college, so perhaps we should think about that as well. The reality is that the vast majority of students view the opportunity and real cost of attending college as being primarily justified by career training, so why do we require them to fulfill a litany of general education requirements when their benefit is unclear?

I'll ask again: Why not simply train people for employment then?

Do we have any accounting professors here?  Why couldn't we have people largely trained to be accountants with basic written literacy by the end of high school?  Why have college at all except for engineers and doctors?

[Ruralguy]

That might be the direction of more than just a few colleges...

[Wahoo Redux]

That might be the direction of more than just a few colleges...

Is that good? I'm honestly asking.

[mleok]

We don't require every student to have a higher education, and general education requirements increase the cost of entry and the opportunity cost of attending college, so perhaps we should think about that as well. The reality is that the vast majority of students view the opportunity and real cost of attending college as being primarily justified by career training, so why do we require them to fulfill a litany of general education requirements when their benefit is unclear?

I'll ask again: Why not simply train people for employment then?

Do we have any accounting professors here?  Why couldn't we have people largely trained to be accountants with basic written literacy by the end of high school?  Why have college at all except for engineers and doctors?

That is a false dichotomy. Again, I am not questioning the ability of a person to major in a non-vocational field of study, but there isn't necessarily a need for general education beyond K-12 education. Did you hear me advocating of the elimination of humanities majors, I am simply saying there is no clear evidence that forcing students to take a bunch of general education classes at the college level benefits students in any way, economically or otherwise. There is a clear financial and opportunity cost, so there should be some benefit, even if it not financial or economic.

[Wahoo Redux]

We don't require every student to have a higher education, and general education requirements increase the cost of entry and the opportunity cost of attending college, so perhaps we should think about that as well. The reality is that the vast majority of students view the opportunity and real cost of attending college as being primarily justified by career training, so why do we require them to fulfill a litany of general education requirements when their benefit is unclear?

I'll ask again: Why not simply train people for employment then?

Do we have any accounting professors here?  Why couldn't we have people largely trained to be accountants with basic written literacy by the end of high school?  Why have college at all except for engineers and doctors?

Again, I am not questioning the ability of a person to major in a non-vocational field of study, but there isn't necessarily a need for general education beyond K-12 education. Did you hear me advocating of the elimination of humanities majors, I am simply saying there is no clear evidence that forcing students to take a bunch of general education classes at the college level benefits students in any way, economically or otherwise. There is a clear financial and opportunity cost, so there should be some benefit, even if it not financial or economic.

I wasn't accusing you of advocating for the elimination of any major.

I was trying to get at what we want out of education.

Again, if students hit the workforce at 17 or 18 they gain five or six years in opportunity costs.

I should be grading, but I will look on a Ebscohost and JStore for studies about the benefits or lack thereof of gen eds----there are both defenders and detractors. 

[mleok]

We don't require every student to have a higher education, and general education requirements increase the cost of entry and the opportunity cost of attending college, so perhaps we should think about that as well. The reality is that the vast majority of students view the opportunity and real cost of attending college as being primarily justified by career training, so why do we require them to fulfill a litany of general education requirements when their benefit is unclear?

I'll ask again: Why not simply train people for employment then?

Do we have any accounting professors here?  Why couldn't we have people largely trained to be accountants with basic written literacy by the end of high school?  Why have college at all except for engineers and doctors?

Again, I am not questioning the ability of a person to major in a non-vocational field of study, but there isn't necessarily a need for general education beyond K-12 education. Did you hear me advocating of the elimination of humanities majors, I am simply saying there is no clear evidence that forcing students to take a bunch of general education classes at the college level benefits students in any way, economically or otherwise. There is a clear financial and opportunity cost, so there should be some benefit, even if it not financial or economic.

I wasn't accusing you of advocating for the elimination of any major.

I was trying to get at what we want out of education.

Again, if students hit the workforce at 17 or 18 they gain five or six years in opportunity costs.

I should be grading, but I will look on a Ebscohost and JStore for studies about the benefits or lack thereof of gen eds----there are both defenders and detractors.

Let me turn the question around, do you think the current haphazard system of general education requirements, taught by underpaid adjuncts, to unmotivated students, fulfills the lofty goals of a liberal arts tradition? I argue that it doesn't do anything to open up student's perspective in any meaningful way, and only serves to tick off a list of arbitrary requirements that do nobody any real good, but lengthen the time to degree, and increase the cost of higher education.

This article on IHE provides an interesting perspective on this issue,

https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2020/02/10/higher-ed-needs-redesign-gen-ed-real-world-opinion

[marshwiggle]

We don't require every student to have a higher education, and general education requirements increase the cost of entry and the opportunity cost of attending college, so perhaps we should think about that as well. The reality is that the vast majority of students view the opportunity and real cost of attending college as being primarily justified by career training, so why do we require them to fulfill a litany of general education requirements when their benefit is unclear?

I'll ask again: Why not simply train people for employment then?

For people who know what they want to do, that makes perfect sense. Why wouldn't you "simply" train people for employment if that's what they want?

Do we have any accounting professors here?  Why couldn't we have people largely trained to be accountants with basic written literacy by the end of high school?  Why have college at all except for engineers and doctors?

If students know by middle school that they want to be accountants, I'd be all for such an option. (Same goes for any other career path; if students have figured it out by the time they start high school, it would be great for them to be able to focus on it. Realistically, they couldn't complete all of the requirements for many things by the end of high school, but they could probably cut a year or two off PSE.)

[marshwiggle]

I was trying to get at what we want out of education.

Again, if students hit the workforce at 17 or 18 they gain five or six years in opportunity costs.

I should be grading, but I will look on a Ebscohost and JStore for studies about the benefits or lack thereof of gen eds----there are both defenders and detractors.

Let me turn the question around, do you think the current haphazard system of general education requirements, taught by underpaid adjuncts, to unmotivated students, fulfills the lofty goals of a liberal arts tradition? I argue that it doesn't do anything to open up student's perspective in any meaningful way, and only serves to tick off a list of arbitrary requirements that do nobody any real good, but lengthen the time to degree, and increase the cost of higher education.

This article on IHE provides an interesting perspective on this issue,

https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2020/02/10/higher-ed-needs-redesign-gen-ed-real-world-opinion

Amazing bit of honesty in  the article:

Implicit within all of this is a dynamic we'd generally prefer to avoid acknowledging: in many ways, the distributional model continues because it provides job security. As long as students are required to take courses in all three divisions (social sciences, STEM, arts and humanities), all three divisions will remain viable.

[mleok]

Do we have any accounting professors here?  Why couldn't we have people largely trained to be accountants with basic written literacy by the end of high school?  Why have college at all except for engineers and doctors?

If students know by middle school that they want to be accountants, I'd be all for such an option. (Same goes for any other career path; if students have figured it out by the time they start high school, it would be great for them to be able to focus on it. Realistically, they couldn't complete all of the requirements for many things by the end of high school, but they could probably cut a year or two off PSE.)

As I mentioned before, the last two years of high school in the UK system already incolves a degree of specialization, and the subjects one chooses to study in those two years affects the areas of study that one can pursue in university. In addition, both law and medicine are undergraduate degrees which take 4 and 5 years respectively.