Is the primary purpose of undergraduate education prep for grad school?

[marshwiggle]

This thread was prompted by the following:

Why are we giving undergraduate grades based on criteria we don't care about?  Do we think that the criteria we are using are actually meaningful for some purpose other than grad school?  I doubt that; memorizing stuff isn't really all that useful in jobs hiring BS science majors either.  Shouldn't we be trying to give grades based on skills that are evidence of potential as scientists?  Shouldn't the grades a student gets inform the student about what aptitudes they have and where they might try to do in life?

I want to suggest that if you have a fair number of students with close to 4.0 GPAs who would not be good grad students if they so chose, you're doing grading wrong.  In fact, you're lying to your students about their abilities.

I looked through the archives to see if this had been explicitly discussed, and the closest I could find was these:
The Purpose of College is Employment
Understanding the mindset of a teaching university

So is the primary purpose of an undergrad education prep for grad school? Does it depend on what proportion of students in a program actually apply to grad school? Does it differ for "professional" and "applied" programs? Should a "A" average be synonymous with "good candidate for graduate school"?

Discuss.

[Ruralguy]

In general, no, since most students don't go to grad school.

Does it depend on % who go on to grad school? I think so. That is, curricula developed should relate to interests of the students. If they are interested in grad school, at least make sure viable options exist for the grad school bound, as well as good advising. Same for the professional programs.

I don't know why we would treat students as inanimate seat fillers (OK, sometimes they act like it...). Figure out how to tweak programs to be best related to post graduate goals.

[Istiblennius]

Thanks for sharing this question. I know our teaching university wrestles with this quite a bit as we do have a population of students who are planning graduate or professional school and a population that is planning directly to career. Some of our program have kind of solved the problem with degree paths that intentionally geared to grad school preparation and paths that are intentionally geared to career.

[marshwiggle]

Thanks for sharing this question. I know our teaching university wrestles with this quite a bit as we do have a population of students who are planning graduate or professional school and a population that is planning directly to career. Some of our program have kind of solved the problem with degree paths that intentionally geared to grad school preparation and paths that are intentionally geared to career.

How many different courses are there typically between these two paths? Do they other things like internships that distinguish them from each other? 

[Caracal]

This thread was prompted by the following:

Why are we giving undergraduate grades based on criteria we don't care about?  Do we think that the criteria we are using are actually meaningful for some purpose other than grad school?  I doubt that; memorizing stuff isn't really all that useful in jobs hiring BS science majors either.  Shouldn't we be trying to give grades based on skills that are evidence of potential as scientists?  Shouldn't the grades a student gets inform the student about what aptitudes they have and where they might try to do in life?

I do give undergrads grades based on criteria I care about, they just aren't identical to the criteria I would use to decide whether a student would do well in grad school. People end up saying weird things when they get too committed to the idea that grades are supposed to be some ultimate reflection of ability. Obviously they aren't, and they can't be. I've had students who have gotten A-s or even B's who I think would be more successful in grad school than students who have gotten As. Sometimes those students turn in papers with great ideas which are poorly executed, or they miss assignments or whatever.

[artalot]

Interesting. Most of the students in our humanities program do not go to graduate school. We encourage all of them, whether they are thinking about grad school or not, to do an internship and all are required to do an independent research project. I would argue that people have to work independently all the time in a variety of careers and that knowing how to show up on time, work well with others and take responsibility for your work is also part of graduate school. We also have quite a few students that work for several years and then pursue graduate work. So, I don't see them as mutually exclusive.
Now, I think I'm in the minority. I know of humanities, social sciences and bench sciences programs at my uni that focus almost exclusively on graduate school preparation, even though less than half of their students go to graduate school.

[smallcleanrat]

Interesting. Most of the students in our humanities program do not go to graduate school. We encourage all of them, whether they are thinking about grad school or not, to do an internship and all are required to do an independent research project. I would argue that people have to work independently all the time in a variety of careers and that knowing how to show up on time, work well with others and take responsibility for your work is also part of graduate school. We also have quite a few students that work for several years and then pursue graduate work. So, I don't see them as mutually exclusive.
Now, I think I'm in the minority. I know of humanities, social sciences and bench sciences programs at my uni that focus almost exclusively on graduate school preparation, even though less than half of their students go to graduate school.

Do you think it is the case that the students who do not go to grad school would have been better served if this were not the case?

Are there emphases on things (e.g. independent research experience) that are not relevant to non-grad school pursuits, and so possibly a poor use of the student's time? I would guess some things which prepare a student for grad school would also be of use to a student who pursues a different career track.

Are there things these students are missing when they are in a program which is designed to prep students for grad school?

[mamselle]

Just to note, the whole emphasis on getting undergrads involved in any research beyond the 'look up references and write a paper' kind (i.e., bench science, etc.) is fairly recent...i.e, to my mind, anyway, in the past 20 or fewer years.

The push came from (I think) families who wanted their kids to be able to get jobs in the biotech and other labs that were springing up all over in the "age of innovation," (by my definition, late 1990/early 2000s') when courses in "innovation and entrepreneurship" started appearing and start-ups were looking for student labor they could bring along to their own specs.

For example, in my own undergrad program (at Ohio State in the late 1970s), I took (and enjoyed) palenotology, biology, psychology and anthropology courses, all of which now include extensive field work, lab visits, etc. Our paleo course was the only one with field trips (I still have my conodonts, rugosa coral, and brachiopods) but none of the rest even approached a 'wet lab' or had us do any bench work at all. (They may have been included in later, higher-numbered courses, of course, but there was no discussion of them, no mention of the pressure to get into them, etc.)

But by the time I'd moved and started my MA work, and just after that (mid- to late-1980s) the rumbles of "undergrad research options" were starting to be heard. By the time I'd finished that work and started working as an EA in various science-y places, the rumbles were louder. The interviews I transcribed for one anthro study of females in engineering, later on, were univocal in discussing the need for such programs, and schools that offered internship arrangements with research-focused companies were especially glittery by then.

So...it's been an evolving thing. Market-driven? (dismalist will like this...) Maybe. Or "perceived-opportunity-driven"? Dunno.

But it wasn't ever thus.

M.

[dismalist]

So...it's been an evolving thing. Market-driven? (dismalist will like this...) Maybe. Or "perceived-opportunity-driven"? Dunno.

It's experimentation with something. That's fine.

But it seems like largely fashion. Easy to explain its survival when college is about signalling. Doesn't matter too much what colleges do.

[Puget]

This doesn't seem to me to be question that can be answered in general. The purpose of undergraduate education depends on the undergraduate. For some it is preparation for grad school (also, what do you mean by "grad school"- PhD programs only? Or all postsecondary education?), for others it is preparation for other sorts of career paths.

We don't force them all to take the same classes so why decide on one goal for all of them? Universities offer a lot of different options and students can pick those that best prepare them for their given path. Our job is to help guide them toward what is best for them, not decide for them that everyone should be preparing for a PhD. In my field, some students will be best served by gain research experience in a lab and doing a senior thesis project, others by doing an internship in a clinical setting, others by working at the campus preschool.

[quasihumanist]

I actually don't think the purpose of my classes is preparation for grad school.  However, I think that the important things students not going to grad school get from studying my subject (pure mathematics) are the same as what would qualify them for grad school.  (Note 1: I did work in technology consulting before grad school, so I'd like to think I'm not entirely ignorant about what's wanted in industry.  Note 2: I think various aptitudes are a lot more important than content knowledge for grad school success.)

[kiana]

Thanks for sharing this question. I know our teaching university wrestles with this quite a bit as we do have a population of students who are planning graduate or professional school and a population that is planning directly to career. Some of our program have kind of solved the problem with degree paths that intentionally geared to grad school preparation and paths that are intentionally geared to career.

How many different courses are there typically between these two paths? Do they other things like internships that distinguish them from each other?

My undergrad had a non-grad-prep major in a few STEM subjects. The grad school prep was significantly more rigorous but also more constrained; the non-prep one had far more electives. For example, in math, as long as you completed the core courses (calculus, linear, discrete/proofs, programming) the rest of your math courses could be literally anything at all as long as they were 300+ level. This made (the lighter version) very popular as a second major. The department also didn't have anywhere near as many issues with people who completed most of the major and got hung up unable to pass a specific required upper-division course; they could transfer to the "lite" major and still graduate.

[Ruralguy]

The sense that undergrad research has only been widely promoted for about 20 years may come from some very large efforts in that time frame, such as getting Bio undergrads involved in using techniques developed during the Human Genome project.  Also, as NSF switched its education/pedagogy programs to almost all very large scale projects, it became a thing for a number of R1 profs to add to their grants this sort of programming and thus getting many undergrads involved, though not always in research per se).

But at some SLACs especially , its been promoted for many decades across many fields of study (not just STEM).In fact, I've seen some excellent research conducted by community college and even high school students. 

[Caracal]

I actually don't think the purpose of my classes is preparation for grad school.  However, I think that the important things students not going to grad school get from studying my subject (pure mathematics) are the same as what would qualify them for grad school.  (Note 1: I did work in technology consulting before grad school, so I'd like to think I'm not entirely ignorant about what's wanted in industry.  Note 2: I think various aptitudes are a lot more important than content knowledge for grad school success.)

Well, this is why I don't give multiple choice exams. They don't measure the skills that I think are actually important in my discipline.

[Istiblennius]

Thanks for sharing this question. I know our teaching university wrestles with this quite a bit as we do have a population of students who are planning graduate or professional school and a population that is planning directly to career. Some of our program have kind of solved the problem with degree paths that intentionally geared to grad school preparation and paths that are intentionally geared to career.

How many different courses are there typically between these two paths? Do they other things like internships that distinguish them from each other?

I'm in a STEM field, so for our program, that means an algebra-calculus-physics-ochem focused pathway with highly targeted curriculum and very few elective choices, one of which is an independent research option for the grad school cohort; internships for the med school cohort. For the more headed to careers available with a Bacc degree it means a more stats based pathway with more electives that can be targeted to the potential interest of the student. These are the students who are actually more likely to do practica to gain work experience.