After reading a recent article in a major weekly magazine, I decided to put the topic up for discussion on my blog. The original title “Why College Shouldn’t Take Four Years” definitely rang a bell with me. I’m going to paint the higher education arena with a broad brush here, so the generalizations will not apply to all, but definitely to most. I have long said that Colleges and Universities long ago ceased to be educational institutions and became businesses with bottom lines that had to be met. Much like corporate America, much was lost when the main purpose of a business (providing a product or service to a customer) took a backseat to appeasing greedy share holders. The mass adoption of higher education by American society and associated wealth creation outside of the traditional wealth circles has painted a new reality for even the haughtiest of educational institutions. Provide value or go under. Now, about all these so called ‘elite’ educational institutions can offer in terms of differentiation from the common ones is a much higher tuition. The fact that many of the wealthiest Americans out there are not graduates of ‘elite’ schools, or graduates of college at all, has started to raise some important questions.
All things equal, what value can a University or College deliver to the student population? Furthermore, what time period is required to deliver that value? Who decided that four years was the nominal length of a college education? Why was this decided? What is the primary purpose of a college education? How does it benefit the student? Can we successfully reduce the overall time period to deliver the education and experience that college student seek and still adequately prepare them for the workforce? What will be redacted from the current four year structure? All of these questions are very important as we venture into a tough economic climate in which wages are falling and the cost of education is rising. Students need to be prepared adequately, at the lowest cost, and then released into the workforce. So, I’ll ask again, should college really take four years?
There are two common ‘camps’ that voice their opinions for this question, though the interests that ride the under currents of higher education are far more in number. The first group declares that college is more about the experience of ‘finding ones-self’ through study over a period of time. They believe that the four years is necessary for a person to fully grow into an individual and be prepared for life. Work is a secondary but still important focus. The second group proposes that the purpose of education is to bestow upon the student the intelligence, wisdom and skills necessary to become a productive member of the workforce. It is by this productivity that the person contributes to society in general, and it is by the day to day social interactions with others that they discover and edify themselves. While it is very important to define yourself as an individual and develop a wholesome life ethic, it is more important to support yourself and family while doing so.
Pulling from my own college experience at a private Catholic university, I will say that I am equally torn between the two camps. I was blessed with one of the best college experiences, from a social perspective, that anyone could ask for. It was far more fun and exciting than most will ever get. It was the people that I dormed with that made this possible. At the same time, it was very expensive and took a long time. The skills I use daily in my profession were mostly self taught and learned through experience. Very little of my formal schooling has contributed to my overall career. I will admit that my career is not a typical one and that you can not really take classes to do what I do. The point is that school can only offer so much. Most of your value as an employee or entrepreneur will come from experience, not from theory. You would think with what I just said, I would fall in the first category of people, but the cost and time involved to get my education was not at all ideal. At the same time, I would not want students to fly through a condensed one year version of college just to become robots in the field. Balance is key with anything.
The majority of my amazing social experience came with the last two years of college and the first year of my graduate studies. After that I was too busy with work to really socialize heavily. That said, I can easily see a world where an undergraduate education takes only three years to complete. Much to the chagrin of the educational institutions out there, I will say that there is a good number of unnecessary or otherwise redundant classes that students are forced to take every semester. Under the guise of a ‘fully rounded’ curriculum, I feel that these are like the filler in hot dogs – good for no one but may add some flavor. I can also see an undergraduate education taking only two years to complete. Looking back over my coursework and curriculum, if I trim out what I consider the fluff, I can condense the time into two years. Is this practical for everyone? Of course not, but for those who want this avenue, it should be available. A graduate degree, for the most part, takes only two years to complete. I will admit that it is very specific and targeted, but why should the undergraduate degree be so broad? Along with truncating the overall length of the undergraduate program, I think that some reorganization of the school year is due as well.
Most colleges and universities work with in the traditional fall and winter semesters, with some additional classes offered over a very condensed summer schedule. Why not split the school year into three or four equal segments and let the students decide which to take. I can easily see trimesters instead of semesters. Each with a full class instead of squeezing the summer schedule. This will also increase the overall utilization of facilities, utilities and staff within each university. It is more efficient! It just makes more sense to me. I won’t even get into what the K-12 segment needs to do in order to fix the problems plaguing education as a whole.
I hope, at the very least, that this opens up dialogue with respect to higher education. I would like to see efficiency go up and costs go down. After all, if you want to run like a business, you can’t just pick and choose which parts you emulate. Let’s improve the bottom line, but not at the expense of the student. Let’s still give them the world class education that is expected of an American university but with 21st century methods. It is definitely possible, we just need to acknowledge the problem and address it accordingly.
To read the original Newsweek article that sparked this blog post, go here: http://www.newsweek.com/id/218183/page/1
I was one of the fortunate few who snatched up a first Gen e-Reader from Sony. At the time, Amazon and Sony were the only two companies that had an e-Reader on the market, and the Sony seemed a better buy. I really loved my e-Reader and used it all the time. It seemed quite sturdy and never let me down. Then, during an unfortunate trip to Europe, the e-Reader bit the dust. I sent it in for repair, and they exchanged it for a new one. I was back in business in about a week. It was a great feeling. During that week, however, I started looking at new e-Readers just in case the repair would have been too expensive or denied somehow.
I don’t know if all of you out there have been following the technology scene lately, but there is a holy trinity of operating system releases going on. Apple released the most recent version of OSX, 10.6, code named Snow Leopard in late August. Microsoft is set to release Windows 7, following the still born catastrophe called Vista. Last but not least, Ubuntu is set to release version 9.10 of their operating system, code named Karmic Koala.