"It's time to prioritize what students want and need over what we want to teach"

[Hibush]

Sometimes,

those are the same business people that sit on their couch and offer the same simple solutions for their favorite NHL teams to win the Super Bowl.

[Caracal]

But post-secondary education in British colonies (including the US) was modeled after those universities. When the populous was mostly illiterate, there were certain professions which needed a more educated workforce. So universities started out as  "professional schools" and only later became sort of "advanced high school" for the wealthy.

Well, the first universities in British America were in New England. The majority of men were literate there. And it wasn't professions, it was profession. The puritans thought ministers needed to be educated, which mostly meant reading classics in Greek and Latin. Only certain denominations remained convinced that this kind of training for ministers was even desirable and as ministerial training became less important, nothing replaced it. You didn't need a college degree to be a lawyer in 19th Century America, or a Merchant or anything else really. Medicine is a possible exception, but classically trained Galenist doctors didn't have a monopoly on practice or respect.

[marshwiggle]

But post-secondary education in British colonies (including the US) was modeled after those universities. When the populous was mostly illiterate, there were certain professions which needed a more educated workforce. So universities started out as  "professional schools" and only later became sort of "advanced high school" for the wealthy.

Well, the first universities in British America were in New England. The majority of men were literate there. And it wasn't professions, it was profession. The puritans thought ministers needed to be educated, which mostly meant reading classics in Greek and Latin. Only certain denominations remained convinced that this kind of training for ministers was even desirable and as ministerial training became less important, nothing replaced it. You didn't need a college degree to be a lawyer in 19th Century America, or a Merchant or anything else really. Medicine is a possible exception, but classically trained Galenist doctors didn't have a monopoly on practice or respect.

This makes the point that the system wasn't designed according to what was good for "the masses". (Contrast that with the public school system.) So continuing to try and preserve a system for the masses that wasn't even created for them in the first place is not at all obvious as a good idea.

[mamselle]

But post-secondary education in British colonies (including the US) was modeled after those universities. When the populous was mostly illiterate, there were certain professions which needed a more educated workforce. So universities started out as  "professional schools" and only later became sort of "advanced high school" for the wealthy.

Well, the first universities in British America were in New England. The majority of men were literate there. And it wasn't professions, it was profession. The puritans thought ministers needed to be educated, which mostly meant reading classics in Greek and Latin. Only certain denominations remained convinced that this kind of training for ministers was even desirable and as ministerial training became less important, nothing replaced it. You didn't need a college degree to be a lawyer in 19th Century America, or a Merchant or anything else really. Medicine is a possible exception, but classically trained Galenist doctors didn't have a monopoly on practice or respect.

Ummm... it's a bit more complex than that.

That line on the entry gate about educating ministers is from "First Fruits," a retrospective history romanticizing the reasons for the foundations of HC.

The college was founded to attract people to the area to man the expected garrison that would protect Boston from an upriver siege by royal troops sailing up the Charles.

And lawyers, doctors, and professors--as well as prospective ministers-- all learned the same Latin and Greek texts at the outset of their careers.

I can't pull up all the citations now, but there's at least one, maybe 2 or 3, detailed studies of pedagogy, curriculum, and their correlations in the 17th and 18th c. with professional degrees. (And not only most men--possibly 90%--were literate, but possibly up to 70% or more of the female population were also literate in the area by the 1700s)

Ministers from other denominations did indeed dispute the relative value of education over a specific experience, but that was later. (See my long screed on this awhile back.... ;--》)

Most Dissenters were still, like the Congregationalists that the Puritans and Separatists merged (essentially, after the 1647/9 Second Synod's platform) to form by 1651, expected to have a strong working knowledge of the Latin commentaries as well as the Hebrew and Greek originals of the Scriptures.

Law offices (at least two sites can be identified) near the school (within 2-3 blocks) functioned to give young clerks training beyond their education but in concert with it, not despite it. Ministers and doctors, some of whom practiced both professions simultaneously (see Rhoden's "Angelical Conjunction") couldn't have read Galen or Augustine without a pretty stiff Latin preparation.

C. Donahue and B. Bailyn and O. Handlin would be people to start reading on this. Also H. Stout.

M.

[spork]

The truth is that we have a terrible problem with K-12 math in this country.

I'm a math professor.  I think at least 75% of our secondary math education graduates are simply not good enough at math to stand in front of a high school classroom and teach it.  They're simply not quick enough on their feet to be able to respond when students come up with potential alternate methods to solve problems, and hence they can only teach math as following the prescribed procedure that they know, rather than as a variety of legitimate methods for which any legitimate use could get to a solution.

And - of course - the 25% who are capable find out how poorly they are paid and how poor their working conditions are, and, unless they are really dedicated, they realize they are smart and can do better compensated things with their lives.

I can see this, sort of second hand. If I had children in the elementary grades, I certainly wouldn't want any of the elementary ed majors I'm familiar with trying to teach them math. Or science. Or reading. Like the U.S. national average, ours are at or near the bottom in terms of academic ability.

But while inadequate preparation in K-12 (for everything from tech-heavy manufacturing jobs to basic information literacy) means college for many equates to grades 13 to 16, there is still the problem that many undergraduates, even the college-capable ones, encounter a curriculum that doesn't achieve whatever its professed outcome is supposed to be.

[Wahoo Redux]

The truth is that we have a terrible problem with K-12 math in this country.

I'm a math professor.  I think at least 75% of our secondary math education graduates are simply not good enough at math to stand in front of a high school classroom and teach it.  They're simply not quick enough on their feet to be able to respond when students come up with potential alternate methods to solve problems, and hence they can only teach math as following the prescribed procedure that they know, rather than as a variety of legitimate methods for which any legitimate use could get to a solution.

And - of course - the 25% who are capable find out how poorly they are paid and how poor their working conditions are, and, unless they are really dedicated, they realize they are smart and can do better compensated things with their lives.

I can see this, sort of second hand. If I had children in the elementary grades, I certainly wouldn't want any of the elementary ed majors I'm familiar with trying to teach them math. Or science. Or reading. Like the U.S. national average, ours are at or near the bottom in terms of academic ability.

But while inadequate preparation in K-12 (for everything from tech-heavy manufacturing jobs to basic information literacy) means college for many equates to grades 13 to 16, there is still the problem that many undergraduates, even the college-capable ones, encounter a curriculum that doesn't achieve whatever its professed outcome is supposed to be.

The same is true regarding English education graduates, at least in the estimations of college English faculty.   

[polly_mer]

So if college isn't for jobs and never was, then what's the problem with essentially shuttering most colleges and universities and starting new with something else that does help people plan for jobs as well as careers?

If the point of college is to serve a very small portion of the population who can handle the big ideas and have the luxury to do so, then where's the call by the most educated to restrict entrance to those who can benefit and want to benefit?

People are voting with their feet away from many places and it's not going to be pretty when it turns out that the university structure becomes irrelevant even for credentialing for anything other than academic employment.

[mahagonny]

People are voting with their feet away from many places and it's not going to be pretty when it turns out that the university structure becomes irrelevant even for credentialing for anything other than academic employment.

Well, that depends partly on how pretty one thinks it is now. Sometimes when things fall apart it's an opportunity for a different approach.

[Hibush]

So if college isn't for jobs and never was, then what's the problem with essentially shuttering most colleges and universities and starting new with something else that does help people plan for jobs as well as careers?

If the point of college is to serve a very small portion of the population who can handle the big ideas and have the luxury to do so, then where's the call by the most educated to restrict entrance to those who can benefit and want to benefit?

People are voting with their feet away from many places and it's not going to be pretty when it turns out that the university structure becomes irrelevant even for credentialing for anything other than academic employment.

It is wonderful that institutions of higher education are able to adapt to the current situation, based on their strengths. From Harvard to Southern New England, schools are changing to meet the needs of the contemporary student.

For readers not from southern New England, I chose to schools that are familiar to locals. One is tradition-bound and exclusive (one of the best in the region as they say), the other modern and chasing after every new trend and paying student. Similar examples can be found across the world.

[polly_mer]

People are voting with their feet away from many places and it's not going to be pretty when it turns out that the university structure becomes irrelevant even for credentialing for anything other than academic employment.

Well, that depends partly on how pretty one thinks it is now. Sometimes when things fall apart it's an opportunity for a different approach.

I agree.  So what's with all the angst during the change, other than people who are losing their current jobs?  I understand that angst, especially if one has devoted decades to educational endeavors where getting a job was not a prime consideration.

[mahagonny]

People are voting with their feet away from many places and it's not going to be pretty when it turns out that the university structure becomes irrelevant even for credentialing for anything other than academic employment.

Well, that depends partly on how pretty one thinks it is now. Sometimes when things fall apart it's an opportunity for a different approach.

I agree.  So what's with all the angst during the change, other than people who are losing their current jobs?  I understand that angst, especially if one has devoted decades to educational endeavors where getting a job was not a prime consideration.

I can answer you but I will be seen as beating a dead horse. But I don't care about that, because I consider the horse to have been not beaten to death but stillborn. That is, no one ever cared enough properly about the right issues.

Here goes: In short, academia has a workplace, worker/employer mismatch, and the effects are everywhere.

I understand that angst, especially if one has devoted decades to educational endeavors where getting a job was the prime consideration.

In terms of fitting the right job with the right worker, the current thought process is (1) some people want to be college professors for a living, therefore they want to put themselves through the lengthy, dicey, prone-to-toxicity and politics no-turning-back ordeal of tenure. After which they will be, like forty something years old already, and finally have a job, and (2) some people want to spend years and tens of thousands earning a PhD so they can have a *fun job* in their spare time that isn't secure and hardly makes any money, and is controversial.
So, among other of my reactions, I submit that people who spend their spare time fighting little-guy unions, promoting the sanctity of tenure and defending and upholding a structure that arbitrarily combines these two extremes, to the inconvenience and detriment of many, deserve to have their bus run into a ditch and get stuck there, and to be identified with the calamity.

[Morris Zapp]

I work at a university which has managed to keep its head above water by essentially becoming open enrollment.  I think the major mismatch at my university is between students who have entirely unrealistic expectations of the sorts of careers they are likely to have and the skills they bring to the table.  A friend of mind jokes about how everyone in her poli sci class introduces themselves by saying "I'd like to be the Secretary of State one day,"  not quite comprehending that there's only one secstate and about a million people who would like that job. 

We have:

students majoring in international business who have never lived abroad and who speak no foreign languages
people majoring in psychology who cannot pass an introductory statistics class, etc.
STudents who struggle with college-level reading who think they're going to law school

I think most Americans have a really poor understanding of their own skills and levels of ability as well as what's a realistic career path.

I get so angry when I realize that our admissions recruiters are essentially lying to our students about BOTH whether or not our degrees are going to prepare students for the careers they wish to have, as well as whether the students who go to a school as poorly ranked as ours are actually equipped (and dare I say smart enough) to actually get the jobs that they aspire to, even with the degrees we are selling them.

It's a bit like someone who majors in piano at a small commuter school in an obscure small town somewhere in the middle of the country.  With any luck, maybe at the end of your training you can get a job as a church pianist, accompanying the choir, or maybe you can teach piano lessons in your living room.  But it's not Julliard and you're not going to be soloing with the Boston Symphony.  Whoever is taking your money and nurturing that fantasy in you is lying to you and stealing from you.

I have no problem with a college claiming that it's preparing you for employment, but they shouldn'lt be selling people these fantasies about how currently you drive a truck, but after you get that assocaite's degree in English you can run for Congress, etc.  It's cruel and manipulative to do so.

[Cheerful]

I think most Americans have a really poor understanding of their own skills and levels of ability as well as what's a realistic career path.

I get so angry when I realize that our admissions recruiters are essentially lying to our students....

I have no problem with a college claiming that it's preparing you for employment, but they should

Thanks for a great post, Morris Zapp!  Higher ed needs more people like you who observe what's going on and talk about it.  The general public needs to be better-informed about what's happening in higher ed.  Increasingly, people are raising important questions.

You didn't mention student debt.  So many students accruing tons of debt that may never be paid back and not finding jobs that make their degrees worth it.

Re: the title of this thread, students often don't know what they need and higher ed is aware of that vulnerability.

[Caracal]

That line on the entry gate about educating ministers is from "First Fruits," a retrospective history romanticizing the reasons for the foundations of HC.

The college was founded to attract people to the area to man the expected garrison that would protect Boston from an upriver siege by royal troops sailing up the Charles.

And lawyers, doctors, and professors--as well as prospective ministers-- all learned the same Latin and Greek texts at the outset of their careers.

I can't pull up all the citations now, but there's at least one, maybe 2 or 3, detailed studies of pedagogy, curriculum, and their correlations in the 17th and 18th c. with professional degrees. (And not only most men--possibly 90%--were literate, but possibly up to 70% or more of the female population were also literate in the area by the 1700s)

Ministers from other denominations did indeed dispute the relative value of education over a specific experience, but that was later. (See my long screed on this awhile back.... ;--》)

Most Dissenters were still, like the Congregationalists that the Puritans and Separatists merged (essentially, after the 1647/9 Second Synod's platform) to form by 1651, expected to have a strong working knowledge of the Latin commentaries as well as the Hebrew and Greek originals of the Scriptures.

Law offices (at least two sites can be identified) near the school (within 2-3 blocks) functioned to give young clerks training beyond their education but in concert with it, not despite it. Ministers and doctors, some of whom practiced both professions simultaneously (see Rhoden's "Angelical Conjunction") couldn't have read Galen or Augustine without a pretty stiff Latin preparation.

C. Donahue and B. Bailyn and O. Handlin would be people to start reading on this. Also H. Stout.

M.

Ok, this is what I get for straying into the 17th century in New England and way out of my wheelhouse and forgetting I don't know nearly enough about colonial New England to be babbling about it. 

I'd still say the basic point holds, though. You didn't actually need to know Latin or Greek to study Law. I'm also assuming that these studies were only vaguely relevant to the actual jobs which most ministers were doing. What was important was the credential. If you were going to get a job as minister of some church somewhere you needed to have a college degree, and this might have been mostly true in New England for lawyers too, although I know it wasn't in Virginia.

There's a whole crisis of education in the 19th century US and it is mostly because you don't actually need the credential for much, besides being a minister of certain denominations. I wouldn't be shocked, if New England lagged behind in this trend, but in the South and the West, it was really only Presbyterian ministers who needed to get a college degree. To become a lawyer you just needed to pass the bar, for example. So, students don't really care if they graduate and they have riots and drink a lot and all the rest...

The larger point is that most of the tangible value of a college degree has always been the credential.

[marshwiggle]

The larger point is that most of the tangible value of a college degree has always been the credential.

No, rather the reverse. In the 17th century, Latin and Greek were real essential skills for certain professions. Isaac Newton's "Principia" ,like many other scientific documents, was written in Latin. Catholic masses were conducted in Latin until the 1960's or so, I believe. (Anyone able to confirm/deny that?) In the 19th century, more people (i.e. sons of the rich) wanted to be "educated" so they got the credential. In the 20th century, as post-secondary education got expanded to women and the middle and eventually working classes, more people got the credential. Things like Latin and Greek went by the boards as the degree became more of a credential.

So the education that started out providing required skills for certain professions eventually became more of a credential as many more people started entering the system.

If the whole system collapsed, and it was redesigned from the ground up for a 21st century population, it would undoubtedly look much different than it does now, because it wouldn't be driven by job-preservation for those employed in the system.

Here's a challenge for forumites: What courses would you consider highly important which are NOT from your own discipline? In other words, what do you think is worth having even if it won't preserve your job or the jobs of your colleagues?

Two I'd suggest would be statistics, and a scientific literacy course, which could be taught by someone from any one of a number of scientific disciplines, so it wouldn't need to favour any specific department.