Comments on: Colleges fail How

By: Stumped

Stumped — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:33:17 +0000

Yes, many earn degrees, certificates, etc. for the credential. (I’m one of them, although I try to do good work anyway). But why is that? Could it be because employers demand such even when unjustified?

Reminds me of the spate of handwringing articles starting in the mid-1980′s complaining about widespread resume inflation, if not outright fibbing. About the time job requirements also started inflating, often to absurd levels. None of the articles asked why so many felt compelled to cheat, or why (so far as I know), resume “enhancement” wasn’t considered much of a problem prior to the 1980s.

So long as employers insist on the education and experience needed to build skyscrapers for jobs building doghouses, candidates will pursue credentials for their own sake, and embellish resumes.

By: Edward

Edward — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:27:17 +0000

I’m late on this thread but here’s my 2 cents from having worked at a university.

The issue is really two fold, both which have been hit on here already. Tenure is the worst thing to have in education. Part of the reason education is so expensive is because of tenure, each school pays X number of profs, not to teach, they can’t fire them. Once a prof has tenure, they are basically going to get paid no matter what they do. I’ve seen non-tenure profs get tenure and they go from great profs to profs who should pay the students to listen to them. Get rid of tenure, let profs compete to teach like the rest of have to compete. If profs are made to compete and justify their paycheck, more of them will be willing to teach what needs to be taught, rather than just what they want to teach.

The second aspect is, not everyone is cut out to go to college. Far too many students are there for the paper. The Internet has created a whole industry that targets lazy students who don’t want to do their own homework. Even at the graduate level where I worked, there were people in the MBA program who were not really interested in doing their best, just in getting the paper. Schools take these people in because they need the money. But just because someone has a degree doesn’t mean they know what they should and we have all run into those people. I got my MBA because I really do want to do my best in business, I finished near the top of my class and my efforts showed in my work. But I work with other MBA’s and it embarrasses me how little these people know at times. Stuff I know they should know and they have degrees from Harvard and Wharton. They certainly sound slick, but really they over priced used cars salesmen, resorting to corporate politics to get things done, rather than using their head. But often they can’t because they didn’t pay attention in school.

By: Brooke Allen

Brooke Allen — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 21:23:09 +0000

Wow, what a discussion.

I have so many things I want to say about this stuff, but haven’t because I’ve been away at a science conference.

Expect my 2 cents soon.

Brooke

By: Jason

Jason — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:57:31 +0000

Time has a timely (sorry, couldn’t help myself) article that touches on some of the themes discussed here.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1967580,00.html

Should colleges teach people to be productive workers, or to be well-rounded? Should everyone go to college? Online learning is more flexible. And so on.

By: Maurreen Skowran

Maurreen Skowran — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:51:43 +0000

@ Lucille — “You need to go to college to learn to think.”

I can’t see how college is the only method to learn to think.

By: G

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:40:59 +0000

Even supposedly practical programs like the MBA fail on providing their graduates with basic skills. Presumably an MBA should prepare the student to become a business or finance executive but how many MBAs do you know who lack the day-to-day skills of those jobs? I’ve seen MBAs who were incapable of writing a business memo or conducting a meeting.

In more academic programs basic skills of the job are also left out. People with a PhD in a liberal arts field usually become university professors but are not taught how to design a course or how to deliver a lecture.

These programs would be much more valuable if they included labs or assignments that required the student to demonstrate knowledge of the subject (financial analysis or medieval history, say) using the skills of the profession, perhaps by formatting the financial analysis as a presentation to the board of directors, or the topic in medieval history as a lecture to undergraduates.

By: Jim

Jim — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 17:04:14 +0000

I have a Liberal Arts undergraduate degree. They taught us discovery of facts, critical thinking, appreciation of literature and art and music. I’m glad they didn’t teach us “How to”
On a field trip to a National Laboratory, we were told that we were looking at a computer and that they were projecting that there would only be 20 computers in the country and those computers would be in National Laboratories.
I’ve used the skills I learned in my undergraduate studies to master several careers. My last career has been with computers which has lasted over 40 years.
If I had been taught “How to” my senior year, I would have been taught to program using a plug board and wires. (Which I subsequently mastered on my own.)
I am grateful for the “life skills” I learned as an undergraduate. I got much more of the “How To” skills in my MBA program.

jim…

By: “My BF left and he took my cat, my car and the chair!” | My Career Lead

“My BF left and he took my cat, my car and the chair!” | My Career Lead — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 04:09:27 +0000

[...] And Nick Corcodilos, the worldclass headhunter, wrote his piece “College Fail How” on his Ask The Headhunter blog here. [...]

By: JB King

JB King — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:36:12 +0000

@Nick, I can understand the desire to want both, but I doubt that’ll happen in the modern world. I would like to be wrong about it, but I think there is a combination of factors that will prevent it. One of the big blockers that I’d see is the question of who would be running the tutorials and how is that funded in general. Professors of universities can get grants to do research, but teaching how to program 101 isn’t likely to be what the research is about unless there is some cross-department work between say Psychology and Computer Science to do it. The Computer Science professors are more likely to be researching topics that would be more like 901 than 101 which can make it hard to build the tree of courses to get a student from who knows what background up to speed enough to help on that research. The research done by various institutions can easily be overlooked in this and is something that shouldn’t be forgotten.

I’m all for improving education, but let’s not forget that it has its own competing goals for how money and time should be spent on things.

By: Nick Corcodilos

Nick Corcodilos — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 20:25:11 +0000

@JB: I’ll offer a counterexample to my own point, which I think is a bit misunderstood. But in any event…

I’ve been managing my website with Microsoft’s FrontPage far too long… tho’ it’s been no problem because the site has never been redesigned, and maintenance is easy. (Redesign is harder.) The articles are free, and so is the time travel. One click and you’re back in 1997!

I’m switching to Dreamweaver, and because I want to do some of my own work, I’m reading a great 1,000+ page book to learn it. It’s a How To book. But like you, I’m one of those people who learn by studying concepts first, then applying them to solve a problem. So I’ve skipped the beginning of the book, which is all How To. I’ve been reading the more conceptual sections, about server models, dynamic web pages and data bases. I need to understand the concepts first. I’ll do the How To later.

BUT: I bought the book because it’s packaged as How To. Why? Because the concepts are not enough. I have an objective, which is to redesign and rebuild my website. (Well, as far as I can. Once the work is rolling, I’ll get some help. Probably.)

If I were shopping for colleges today, I’d want one with the best “theoretical” faculty. But I’d also look for a school that, like my Dreamweaver book, provides plenty of “tutorials” and hands-on experience doing real stuff.

I want both. I think schools can do a lot better delivering both.

(My fantasy is to go back to school and learn computer science.)