[30Days]: A Ramble On Academia

[seventhe]

WHAT YOU WOULD CHANGE ABOUT ACADEMIA.

Well, okay.

I am going to separate this out into two parts: some big, fundamental things that I think need discussing, and some smaller, within-the-system, more reasonable things I think are relevant.

It's going to become a ramble and I am sure there are a lot of things I am going to miss. I have definitely NOT said everything I have to say about academia; this came out being more about academia as a whole, and I could write another 8000 words on effing grad school. But I don't want to let this eat up 2 hours of my evening. Have a sampling.

The thing is, I look at the system of academia right now and I see a giant clusterfuck. I'm looking from a couple different directions, mind -- the bearer of an undergraduate degree in engineering; a professional chemical engineer; a professional chemical engineer in the field of research; a graduate student; a part-time graduate student; a professional involved in the hiring process, looking to hire new graduates. Even just looking at the system from one of these points of view, you can see something's out of alignment. But when you get the 360-degree, high-def view of it all, it just looks ...off.

College seems to serve two purposes, and they're not exactly interchangeable, nor are they overlapping well, and... alright, here:

When I was a high school junior/senior and looking into colleges, nobody asked me what do you want to study. They asked, what do you want to do?

There is a huge difference.

There's a portion of people who go to college to study something. They want to study literature, film, photography, music, history, art, philosophy (even math and some sciences fall into this category...!). They want to read papers and textbooks, write analyses, produce works. And it isn't that these jobs don't translate into employment options -- but the way they do it is general; a degree tells an employer that you have developed a certain skill-set (reading things, understanding details, writing papers; giving presentations; obeying timelines for homeworks and projects; computer skills; etc) (and your GPA can be a measure of how well you have developed said skill set) during your four years of college: a skill-set that is useful and relevant, but unrelated to the subject of your degree. Many people don't directly use the things from their undergraduate degree to obtain employment, or during said employment. It is an indirect boost.

Now, there's another portion of people who to go college to get a degree that will take them into a specific career. You might be able to guess that, as a chemical engineer, this is the group I fall into. Business majors, engineers, computer scientists. Some extremely lucky, talented, or privileged art/photography/music majors, yes. Pre-med. Raw sciences (chemistry, biology, physics) moving towards PhDs (pre-grad?). Your path in life is a lot more specific, here -- you know you're going to apply for certain jobs, and if you do decently well, you're probably going to get one of those certain jobs because they are slotted exactly for people with your degree. And it isn't a job - it's a career, a thing that you studied and then took said learnings to the workplace and followed.

Notes:
1. These are generalizations, of course.
2. There's bitterness from the people in the second group towards the people in the first group. I'll admit I'm still a little pissed off, seething and hurt and wanting recognition, because I didn't "get" to study "fun stuff" or "easy stuff" in college. It's stupid, yes. Here is your full disclosure. Moving on.

I think there is, and should be, a place in both academia and industry for the following:

1. Studying for the sake of studying; art for the sake of art; increasing humanity's knowledge pool.


2. Obtaining a degree which represents a general skill set, with which to enter a tier of general employment options which draw on that skill set but nothing more specific.


3. Obtaining a degree which is a path towards a specific field of employment, which is more complex / specific / demanding of very certain kinds of knowledge/understanding skills, with which to enter a career.


4. People who, for whatever reasons - financial, personal, intelligence, or just plain don't fucking want to - do not attend college but would like to have reasonable, self-supporting employment options.

#1 is what I sort-of see as one of the purposes of graduate school. When you attend graduate school, it's an academic free-for-all, in a way: you're only answerable to your advisor and whoever is giving you your grant money, and whatever topic within those bounds that interests you is free to be looked at. You can get a PhD by analyzing "something that didn't work", if you look into the why and how. Graduate degrees in the liberal arts fields allow research into a kaleidoscope of topics. I do think there's a place for this, and I think that in the profit-driven, purpose-driven, everything-for-a-reason world academia is now we risk losing the genuine appreciation for learning.

BUT.

I also see too many students coming out with PhDs who are... unemployable. Too many students spend too much time looking into one thing, focusing on one thing, and whether it's their advisor or their own limited vision or a lack of understanding about how industry works? I don't know, but we've interviewed probably 2 dozen Chem-E PhD recent graduates and have hired... none. And this is the thing. Getting a graduate degree is an exploration into the world of academia at its core; students who get degrees and then want to move into industry are often missing the basic freaking concept of application. And I think this is a huge disconnect, here, universities wanting to output PhDs but too caught up in their internal (academic) system of work - and companies, looking for something different but not in a way that helps alert the university to the ways of industry. There's a huge divide in looking at stuff for stuff's sake, and looking at stuff that has a reason and a purpose.

Hell -- we could use more "reason and purpose" research people in the medical field, finding new and awesome ways to cure cancer. We could use them in the energy field, making fuel cells a net gain rather than loss, making solar energy actually efficient and affordable. So often academia is its own little world - and wants to be, and they hoist this flag of knowledge for knowledge's sake! like their defense.

I think it has its place, but I am not sure I'm buying it as all academia can be.

#2 and #3, I think, are what the system does now - I am not going to say "does well", although I think in some cases it does very well and in others it fails completely. What I would like to see is a better differentiation. I have a lot of friends who went to school, got that sociology degree (apologies to any readers who have a sociology degree; I am thinking of one specific friend who is not on LJ) and then... couldn't get a job! Why can't I find a job. I have a degree! All the things that are offered are secretary positions and administrative assistants and customer service. And I sat and sympathized and wondered, what kind of job did you expect? There's no guaranteed employment at the end of that degree.

See, we tell people, "Want a better job? Go to college!" and I am not saying that the jobs aren't better overall. But often it isn't a magical cure-all for employment, unless you pick up the kind of degree that translates into a career. You enter the market with degree X and you are competing with degrees A-Z. A chem-E enters the market and is only competing with chem-Es for chem-E jobs. And I don't think this message gets out, really, in a way that's fair at all -- I think we can do way, way better.

Do we want a "generic" degree that just dumps people out with a core skill set? I don't know. In a lot of ways it would be helpful, both to those who apply for it and employers who don't care if you're a history major or a sociology major as long as you have above a 3.0. At the same time... who would want to do that? Part of the fun of college is all of those interesting classes where you get to learn about color photography or read feminist literature. And you learn a lot in a Women's Studies degree that's fucking important, even if it doesn't instantly translate into a job. It isn't a solution. But -- where are you going to employ a ton of photographers? There's a balance. I think we need to find it. I think students should be more aware of job/career opportunities, colleges should help to make degrees affordable, and industries should maybe work to make more degrees and jobs applicable, if possible.

And. #4.

#4 is I think where we really fucking fail in our system. The obsession with "Get a better job? Get a degree" is ridiculous. College isn't for everyone. It shouldn't be for everyone, because everybody in the US could have a degree and we'd still need McDonalds employees and garbagemen, and they'd just have degrees. Plus, college as it is right now really isn't for everyone. The system is so fucking internal, so entrained and prejudiced, and -- not everybody learns the same way, and that is fucking okay.

I am all for the creation and improvement and establishment and anchoring of 2-year, 3-year, 4-year vocational, technology-based training schools. All for it. I think these places can offer us a hugely valuable work force - in a world where our manufacturing landscape is hugely changing - and setting up a way to learn and prove one's-self that isn't based around a test-taking GPA is going to be vital if we want to use all the intelligence we have that maybe doesn't take tests well, or is maybe dyslexic, or maybe struggles with words, or with maths. (Note: if these people want to go to college they should fucking go to college, yes, I am all for colleges being so much more inclusive of people's learning styles!!! Because they, um, kind of suck at that right now. I am saying that: those who do not want to go to college should have a plethora of other awesome options.)

And I think this is a good lead-in to my final point here, not touched in my numbered list but important nonetheless: Non traditional students are the way of the future, schools. Heads fucking up, okay?

There need to be more options for people who want to go back to school but are working and have established lives with established needs and costs. There need to be options for people who want to change degrees or change careers, options that don't link you to a choice you made as a dumbass 18-year-old but don't enslave you for the next 10 years in part-time mayhem. There need to be options for part-timers -- respected fucking options. There needs to be a realization that just as people are deciding to get married later, have children later -- we're deciding on our actual loves later, our careers, and there should be openings to make those changes that do not bankrupt people: financially, socially, physically, emotionally.

Period.

Which becomes the question, what can we do now, within the system, to help more people? Because I think a lot of the fundamental problems are -- there aren't answers. I don't have answers; I barely have ideas. I can point and make "MEH" sounds in the direction of the problems, but that's about it. But can we guide things now to help us out in the interim, help guide us in the way I think will help everybody? Well, uh, MEH.

• Let's work to better construct degrees to be applicable to the real world, for people who want to go to college to get a better job and end up bitten in the ass because of it.


• Let's extend college and college-like opportunities to lots of people, not just the middle-and-upper-class white kids whose parents are guiding them towards the (effing) Ivy Leagues. Let's let everybody know what their options are, and let them get there.


• Let's open up both undergrad and graduate school to part-time students. Being a part-time student is already fucking hard. Let's not make it harder on these people who are sacrificing their time, their personal money (you try getting a scholarship for part-time school!), many of their other life goals, their energy and spoons and personal lives for this. Let's help them, because part-timers are deathly hard workers and usually they're doing this for a reason: and don't we want to encourage people like that? Not discourage them?


• Let's think about better ways to get people who aren't made for college into a system made for them, rather than expecting everybody to fit the "4 year pull-and-pump degree" system.


• Let's see more money - from industry, from corporations, from government, wherever - going into really helpful research like medicine, energy, and technology.


• Let's not forget the arts: let's keep some funding going there, too.


• Let's figure out a better system to make cross-discipline career changes, because let's face it: not everybody wants to do what they think they wanted to do when they were 16.


• Let's be awesome.

I told myself I'd stop writing this at 8:00 and it is already 8:05 so I am going to post but I KNOW I HAVEN'T SAID ALL I WANT TO SAY so uh feel free to give me some leading questions if you are so inclined etc etc seriously, this doesn't even get into the way I would GUT graduate school and START OVER in so many places so.... dammit Cendri way to give me a topic I could cover for a week >.>

This is part of my 30 Days of Posting meme - feel free to check out the schedule of posting! My month is full, but if any of the posts make you want to ask for something else, go ahead and leave a comment anyway! DW || LJ

Comments

[jerkface]

I was going to quote a whole bunch of points from this post and gush at them individually, but instead I'm just going to do applaud this, throw some confetti, and say that THERE IS A VERY STRONG POSSIBILITY THAT I MAY BE IN LOVE WITH YOU AT THIS POINT, JUST SAYING.

Why are you not queen of the world yet?

[seventhe]

I AM TRYING. LET US LAUNCH A CAMPAIGN. YOU CAN BE A VP.

[wallwalker]

*stands up and applauds, literally*

I... I mean. I agree with just about all of this, although my perspective is quite different. It's been a long time since my college days. In fact, let's get the full disclosure out of the way now: I'm a slightly embittered retail worker with a undergrad Bachelor's of Science degree in Psychology, partially because I do find psychology in general interesting, and partially because I was under a lot of pressure to graduate in four years and found that I couldn't handle biology or chemistry without going completely insane. (I was on scholarships at a private college; if I'd lost my scholarships there was no way I would've finished the degree.) I was one of those kids who did not end up wanting to do what I wanted to do at age sixteen; I started college in the second group that you described, and then ended up in the first group. And I know that resentment that you speak of first-hand, because I felt it for myself. I wept bitterly at graduation because I had failed to procure a piece of paper that would guide me directly towards an exciting and exclusive career; my actual degree felt like a horrible consolation prize. To this day, my degree remains in my closet, unframed; for the longest time, it hurt to think about it, because it represented so little to me. It didn't give me the better career or better life that I'd been promised since day one. All I felt was regret and anger at myself, for wasting my chance at higher learning. I'm only just starting to move past that, and even now I have no idea how I'd go back to college. Surviving on my wage is hard enough as it is, and I can't even imagine doing it with the added burden of student loans.

Sometimes I toy with the idea of going to grad school, but in the end I have no idea what I would do there. I don't know what sort of specialized subject I'd want to write a thesis about. I just want to be learning again; I feel as though I have stopped. I have to admit, I do miss college. And yes, having a way to get a better job and to make more money than my barely-livable wage would be nice, but honestly? I don't really need massive amounts of money, as long as I have enough. If anything, I want a new job because I want a job that is stimulating and challenging in a way that my current job simply is not, and if I got another degree it would be as a means to an end toward that job, since I can't make a job out of learning in and of itself.

I've stopped telling people at my workplace that I have a degree, because when I mention it, I always get the same question. They always ask me some variation of, "Well, if you have a degree, what are you doing here?" And I always have to shrug off the question and go somewhere and just resist the urge to rage or cry or something equally irrational, partially because of the attitude behind the question. "If you have a degree, then you can do better than this," it says, and that's just... not always true. (I get that question less now than I did, say, seven years ago. I'm sure that the economy has something to do with that - the attitude has shifted from "What are you doing at a lousy job like this?" to "Well, at least you have a job.")

And the saddest thing is, I'm aware that I'm one of the luckier ones. I have a degree, I have a job, and I have no student loan debt. I know too many people who are in much worse situations because of college. I have a lot of friends who've tried to go to college and just didn't make it through, and other friends who have degrees who can't find jobs at all, and still others who have either graduated or failed to graduate who struggle under the weight of student loan repayments. The worst case that I know of is a veteran friend of mine who went to the school of business at the local university for a while. He didn't finish college, but was having trouble with student loan repayments, and for a long time he couldn't find a job because the repayment issues had shot his credit to bits and no one would hire him because of it. He's said many times that he wishes he'd never gone to college, because he felt like he'd learned more about life in the Marines than he ever did in school. And this is despite the number that his years of service has done on his peace of mind. It's a troubling thing.

So... yes. I mostly agree with everything you say. I feel like I could have avoided a lot of things in my life if I'd had the agency, fifteen years ago, to say, "Okay, so I'm going to go to a college I can afford, I'm going to get financial aid that I'm going to be able to handle later, and I'm going to try things out. I'm going to try a bunch of different things, and see what sorts of career paths I'm interested in before I commit to something I might not be able to finish." If I'd been free to study different things and see which ones actually interested me, well, there were quite a few things I would have wanted to try. There were a lot of reasons for the way that things turned out, and I won't lie - most of them were internal. (I was dealing with college in much the same way as I dealt with much of life, back then - which is to say, I just wanted it to be over and to find the good part of life, already. That probably tells you all you need to know about my state of mind.) I'm trying to figure out how to do something about it now and still have the ability to keep some sort of job and have a place to live, because the money to go back to college on my own just isn't there. And I want to be able to find a way to stop my friends from going through what I went through. (I look at my boyfriend, who's trying to pursue a fairly general degree and has already put himself into student-loan debt of thousands of dollars and is underemployeed, and I'm scared that he's making the same sort of mistake I'd made. But given his background and interests and academic history, suffice it to say that I have no idea what else he could do that would put him in a better situation.)

Anyway. Sorry to rant on and on. Maybe I should've just nodded and agreed. But, well, this is something of a sore subject for me.

[crankyoldman]

So many people I know that are now miserable got caught up in the four year degree thing. I was lucky that my parents told me that if I at all doubted what I was doing, to just take time off and we'd figure out the money thing later. Four years is an awful short period of time to do stuff like that, and an awful lot of pressure. Fucking pyramid scheme.

I'm lucky my undergraduate degree is a profession type degree, despite the fact that like 70% of the industry I have no desire to work in anymore (defense... rockets are used more for shooting than for awesome. This still sort of depresses me.)

I can certainly understand it being a sore subject! I technically succeeded at it and it's very much a sore subject for me.

[wallwalker]

I'm sure my family would've been happy to tell me something like that if they could have, but it was the same situation. The money wasn't there for it, and what money we had was going to have to be split between me and two other children.

Now that I have a lot of friends who are students and see how the local college works, I'm struck by the fact that virtually no one I know here is in a program that will end in a degree in four years. Even the ones who are following their major's plan perfectly from beginning to end - and they are rare birds - are being sidelined by, say, the inability to get into some required class or another that they'll have to wait another semester to take. Summer school has gone from a good idea if you can manage to afford to take the time/money for it, which is what it usually was in my undergrad years, to a requirement if you want to graduate "on time."

It really is a pyramid scheme, isn't it? I'd never realized that, but it is. I've seen a lot of articles about the "education bubble" and how it's being pushed on kids so that they'll draw thousands in student loans that they won't be able to handle, and it makes me sad. Despite my fears over its practicality for me, I learned a lot in college, and not all of it was related to what I learned in class. But it shouldn't be treated as a get-rich-quick button or as the only real alternative so that companies can bilk students out of their money.

[seventhe]

This is exactly what I was hoping for, with all of these memes, because gosh, I love this discussion.

Even though! Your situation sounds like BALLS, seriously, I do not want to make light of it: you are the kind of person I think the system can really betray, the way you were gutted like that. The "magical four year degree" doesn't exist. And I've seen lots of people in this situation, which just makes it worse, people who go and study something interesting and come out ready to work and -- what do you have? Nothing. A piece of paper.

And I think -- I mean, you say you'd like to go back to school. If there were a way/opportunity for you to do so, without completely bankrupting your life, would you? Let's say there was a ... secondary university system. For people with undergraduate degrees already, who would have TAKEN a basic college core but want to transform one degree into another. Just throwing an idea out there.

[wallwalker]

Honestly, yes, the situation is disheartening sometimes, but as I said before:

1. I'm really one of the luckier ones; at least I have the degree, and I'm not having to put every spare nickle towards paying for it.
2. It's really as much my own fault as it is the system's fault.

Anyway. To answer your question, YES. I'd do something like that in a heartbeat, if I could. And I've often wondered why there isn't something like what you've described! I've taken the core college classes once; why should I need to take them again to earn a different degree, when I've shown that I was perfectly capable of completing them? (Although the answer at this point is probably something like, "Because it's been almost a decade since then and you're not anywhere near your old college.")

[uiscebeatharua.blogspot.com]

Regarding #4; I have grown to despise the immense pressure that YOU MUST GO TO COLLEGE. It really isn't for everyone, but it has become sort of a status symbol to have at least a four year degree. It is unthinkable for a kid growing up in a middle-class, suburban household NOT to go to college. It's about as taboo as premarital sex, or registering for the "wrong" political party, depending on your home. :-P

So I think because of this, people are forced/inclined to go to college before they have had time to figure out what exactly they want to do with their time there. This I say from the perspective of someone who went to college to learn a skill set to apply for jobs in a specific area in order to establish a career; I knew at least I was shooting for engineering. The specific branch I chose when I got there and was given a few options, but I had pretty much decided after staying up til 2AM on multiple occasions studying for and crying over AP Electromagnetics exams that I was going for electrical. And pay it back dammit.

And I guess you could argue that maybe part of the educational experience should allow for some self-discovery. I think public/private high schools probably give a general enough exposure, but that doesn't necessarily guarantee the maturity and self-awareness required to evaluate for yourself (i.e. no parents beating on you to go off and do it already) what it is you actually want to do.

Because the cost of college is so high I don't think you can justify the payments and loans unless you have a plan to make and repay them using what you've learned; i.e. seeing a return on your investment.

I know a lot of people who swapped majors, and while there's nothing wrong with that, many of them did so because they just didn't have a strong idea as to what they were doing at school. Would you give 20k to an investor without knowing how he was going to invest it? No.

And of course, the investment is greater than just a material one, the return isn't only the job you land after graduation...some of the most valuable things I learned I don't use in my "career," today. But they are there, and have improved me as a person. These things are worth more than money, so I suppose you could argue the high price of "experience."

It would be great to go off and just study what you love. But you can't justify putting yourself into eternal debt in the quest to do so. This is not a responsible way to approach the current system; you will be screwed.

Universities are a business. Research professors are only interested in grants and many only grudgingly teach. And then, straight out of the book. Which they maybe wrote and published themselves, and changed it annually just enough so they could republish it and so that you couldn't buy it used from someone who had the course last year. P.S. True story. Also, mass-published books are sold for an arm and a leg, and only bought back at a fraction of what you spent.

So many professors don't care about teaching. For the money shelled out for University education, this is unacceptable. Very few courses I learned ANYTHING from the lecture. I did a lot of self-teaching in college. Which I would hesitate to ever even joke about around my parents (who helped me quite a bit with tuition); it sounds like such a waste. May have just been my learning style didn't jive with the majority of the teaching styles at Pitt and I was able to find ways around this impediment, hah. The few professors I did learn something from really changed things for me. We need teachers.

And we need "doers." Or "done-ers?" People who are experienced in the application of what they teach, whether it be a field engineer who can tell you why it's important to shield signal from power lines or a poet who can show you beauty in words and not just assign an e.e. cummings reading and summary for Monday. It's not enough to learn about something...application is key. (I feel that my degree at Pitt involved a lot less hands-on and lab work than my friends who went to Penn State Behrend, just a note.)

Along those lines, vocational and technical training schools could teach colleges a thing or two. Look at your man. Now back to me. How is it that we've come to look down upon such institutions that teach people valuable skills that are actually critical to our society? We need to drop the snobbery and let people know that these are acceptable options post-senior-year and even acceptable alternatives to college. And not make it seem sub-human to get a welder's certification. That shit is important and useful. I think we need to reconsider how disproportionate our perceived value is to how actually valuable such paths and skills are.

In general I think people should only invest gregarious amounts of money in education when they know why they are doing it, and as a bonus if they can make a return on their investment. If that means taking up trades and "real" jobs during high school or doing so between high school and college, taking time for some self-discovery, I don't think it's something to rush into. The ultimate result: debt and heart-ache. When did being broke and bitter become sexy?

In the end, neither degree nor certification will guarantee a job.

[wallwalker]

How is it that we've come to look down upon such institutions that teach people valuable skills that are actually critical to our society? We need to drop the snobbery and let people know that these are acceptable options post-senior-year and even acceptable alternatives to college. And not make it seem sub-human to get a welder's certification. That shit is important and useful. I think we need to reconsider how disproportionate our perceived value is to how actually valuable such paths and skills are.

Yes. This. I mean, most of my college-bound academic friends actually envy the ones who learned vocational skills now, because they've realized that having those sorts of marketable skills is a real asset. My best friend actually misses his days when he was plying a trade; he's studying to be a teacher now, but I think that in his heart of hearts he misses working on construction sites, and would still be there if he hadn't become a victim of the times (laid off from his job, couldn't find another one, had to find another option to survive.)

[seventhe]

Alright, I want to break this down into a couple parts:

1) Experience/Application. Yes. It isn't something I got to mention in-depth in my discussion above, but it falls neatly into what I think are the #3ers, and I'll flat-out say it here:

If you're getting a degree that goes straight into a career-type job, you need to get experience at university.

I am talking internships and co-ops, and I think that they are super applicable across the board. Engineers have opportunities for internships, co-ops, and even years-off joint with college/company to work full-time -- this is amazing and personally I think it should be a "required" part of degree programs. I can't tell you how much it makes an engineer stand out, from a hiring standpoint, looking at a senior who has worked a real job and a senior whose only experience is "senior lab" or "senior design." Huge flags there. (I put "required" in quotes because I am also all about choice and I don't like mandates, BUT... gosh I think that having experience at the center of a program like this would go a LONG way to getting things back to being applicable.)

And I don't think it's just relevant for engineers. Business students? Internships with local management companies, so that they can see what sort of work they'll be doing. Any of the degrees that are meant to carry you into a career? You should get to experience that career, so that you (a) know what you're coming out with and (b) come out so much more prepared to offer yourself to a company.

Because? I think there are a lot of skills required in a job that you don't learn in school. Submitting a paper to a professor who doesn't give a shit about you is VERY DIFFERENT than submitting a weekly report to your BOSS. You write them in a completely different way. You can also bullshit WAY LESS at a job than you can in school. During a semester? Bullshit all you want; the prof only has a couple weeks to catch you out on it, and then you both don't care. your job? You're going to be there (ideally) for a long time. You tell your boss you know how something works on the first day when you don't - it might not catch up to you then, but yeah, you'd better believe it'll come back.

Anyway. That's one of the proposals I should have added as a way to improve: REAL LIFE, WORKPLACE EXPERIENCE.

2) Professors / Teachers.

This is something I deliberately didn't get into because I have gotten into it so many times in the past three years, but I agree. And THIS is where I think I see the effects of the divide between, say, #1 and #2 and #3?

You get a lot of PhDs who want to enter research; that's really the purpose of getting a PhD, the majority of the time, no? It isn't applicable in industry (companies don't want to pay your salary) other than research departments, so usually you end up somewhere back in academia. And usually these are people who want to do research. They don't want to teach, they don't want to grade papers, they don't want to do any of that shit.

So they don't.

Sometimes you're lucky and you get a good grad student (like a Katy) who cares about teaching, but usually this means the responsibilities for actual TEACHING get shafted down the line until, basically, they land upon the student.

This: it is bullshit.

We need a way to help get teaching back into professors. And I think making a better divide between the #1s and the #2/#3s would help here: let people who want to do research go into that, into university think-tanks and the like. Let's get people like Cendri, who want to teach and help kids, into professorships. MAKE THEM SEPARATE FUCKING POSITIONS. They cannot continue to be the same and sustain university culture. We are losing out on bright minds doing fundamental research because they're tied up in (shitty) teaching. We are losing the opportunity to fucking teach kids who are there to learn because their professors don't want to be in the classroom. Let's fucking fix this.

3) Snobbiness.

Basically, I agree with everything you said here.

[ambersweet]

I TOTALLY AGREE that teaching professors and researchers should be two separate positions. I would love to teach college English, and I'd be damn good at it, too, but the publish-or-perish mentality scares me to death - to the point that I went after a second degree so that I can specialize in something else. I don't want to research, I don't know if I'm cut out to actually write professional-level articles, but teaching? Would be fun.

[uiscebeatharua.blogspot.com]

My co-op was probably the single most valuable technical experience during my college career. Aside from other issues, Pitt's co-op program is the primary reason I chose the place to go to school. Unlike how this kind of thing is usually or supposed to work out, I was not hired by the company I co-oped with upon graduation. And in addition to the technical stuff there was so much I learned that you can't teach in a classroom, (though there are courses that attempt to address things) such as: working as an individual in a group / as part of a team, interpersonal skills, delegating and managing, whether it be subordinates (as a co-op I had non :-P) or even attitudes. Negotiation, compromise, working with folk in the "real world" are skills that are pretty useful and aren't really explored by attempting to get partial credit on a half-assed assignment or exam question. Though possibly working on a project in a team.

Also a lot of people still attempt a crack at the subtle art of bullshit, which CAN be learned in the workplace but requires significant skill and finesse and usually isn't worth the cost ;-P

Experience, especially in this competitive market, is/seems so critical. You would know, Sev, having experience interviewing :-) I think it is foolish, so foolish, to look down upon those who can DO. Whatever "level" (I use quotations here because even this phrasology subtly hints that vocational or technical degrees should be compared against college and graduate degrees in terms of tiers of validity, which I don't really agree with) of education.

Professors and researchers. I guess the idea here is that research professors are valued for their knowledge and intelligence and in return for money to do what they love, they need to give back to the University in the form of hopefully rubbing off on budding, bushy-tailed undergrad (graduate?) students? You'd think that their RESULTS would be enough value returned but that isn't always guaranteed.

I think this is a temptingly logical conclusion to jump to, but I tend to believe that people work best when their focus is uninterrupted and their attention undivided.

Thoughts?

[crankyoldman]

THIS IS FIVE BILLION YEARS LATER BUT SEV SAID THE DISCUSSION WAS STILL GOING ON HERE.

I tend to believe that people work best when their focus is uninterrupted and their attention undivided.

Heh, oh. If only. Once you are of a financial insecurity (come from a poor background for instance) or family having (especially if you're the woman in the family having situation) having an undivided focus on school or a subject is basically impossible. Like, I was married for a year during undergrad. I didn't have kids, but god, husbands are apparently really demanding! They want you to spend time with them! And be home at certain hours!

I think that in the current system, it works if your attention is undivided, because the current educational system largely does not account for people that may have lives outside of school. You can have outside responsibilities and still be focused. My ladyfriend has two jobs and is finishing her second degree. She's not unfocused.

I think asking people to hold off on life (or being a certain income bracket) in favor of school is ridiculous and tends to favor only certain kinds of people. Which is how certain careers end up with only certain kinds of people.

I mean, I don't think you were getting at that, but I just had to put in my two cents there.

[seventhe]

The biggest problem I have with grad school right now is that every professor expects HIS CLASS* to be my #1 priority.

It's a self-centered (in which the "self" is the graduate department), prejudiced, unfair policy. I'm an adult. I have a job, I pay for my housing and food. I have to take care of the place in which I live, and I have to feed myself. I have other responsibilities. I have health problems. I have appointments and commitments. And you know what? I have hobbies, too, which I am committed to, and as a 30-year-old person I view them as a healthy, valuable, and necessary part of my lifestyle.

Grad school needs to get the fuck over itself and realize that it isn't going to be the #1 priority for all students -- and it needs to realize that this is okay.



*I say his, because, guess what! MOST OF MY PROFS ARE DUDES.

[seventhe]

Experience:

There is absolutely no way that 4 years of engineering, classes only, will teach you how to do a real job. None. That doesn't mean a person with a 4-year degree isn't worth hiring - they will have proven their ability to work and learn, and most engineering jobs provide 6 months of on-the-job training to candidates who catch their eye.

But "group projects" in school aren't at all comparable to working on a team at an industrial job. I'm sorry, but they're not. People care more at a job, and they know their bosses are watching, AND ALSO, you know you're going to have to work with these people again and again, so group work tends to go a lot more - if not more smoothly, it at least GOES a lot more. Rarely have I seen the kinds of situations I saw (and was in!) in school, where one person carried the bulk of a team's weight just to get the project over and done with. Just doesn't happen as much. In industry, it's more one weak link (who often gets removed), rather than one strong dog pulling most of the sled.

Interviewing:

In my last round of interviews, I experienced a really interesting thing: I talked to a group of students who basically thought they were "good enough."

Okay. Now, in interviewing, you can't really overly try to sell yourself - I talked to some students trying to do that, too, and let me say, the interviewer sees through it right away. But you do want to make an impression on your interviewer. The thing was, I saw 4 students in a row who all... basically, I could not tell them apart.

Tell me about experience, I would say, what was the most challenging thing you've faced? and they'd all tell me about the senior lab project. Tell me about collaboration, and they'd all tell me more about the senior lab project. Tell me about communication, and it was usually about giving a presentation or writing a report. Tell me about this lab, I'd say, and they'd fumble over engine descriptions and bottle reactors.

These are things every engineering student in every program does!

And the overwhelming attitude was -- I'm here, I graduated, I have a degree; what more do you want? Like as if I would look over their resume and say, "Oh, okay, you're an engineer, you have some kind of GPA, yeah, that's enough. we'll take you."

It goes back to stuff I said earlier - the magical way people expect a degree to convert into a job. And these were ENGINEERS, where it's usually easier to climb into a career of some kind. The degree isn't enough, if you can't tell me anything about how hard-working you are or what challenges you faced that weren't academic or a time you had to overcome some kind of communication barrier, or -- anything that sets you apart, that makes you a unique and shining candidate.

And this is why I think experience sets you apart, is so valuable, and should be a requirement: because lots of people can pass Senior Lab without actually learning anything from it.

people work best when their focus is uninterrupted and their attention undivided.

I think what you meant to say - or what I would agree more with - is that people work best when they're (mainly) doing what they want to do. I doubt any job is ever going to be 100% "what you want to do", but I feel like a lot of professors don't want to teach, they want to do research. And this generation has a lot of people who would love to teach but are scared off by grant proposals and the need to have a research department. It seems to me there's an easy solution there?

[justira]

I want to give more/better tomorrow when it's not midnight but for now can I just say that I want to MAKE OUT WITH YOU LOTS? ._.

[seventhe]

I LIKE BOTH EXTENDED RESPONSES AND MAKEOUTS

[crankyoldman]

Heh, well, I needed a reminder of why I'm going for a doctorate and why I took a four hour exam that asked me about the percentage of a percentage of a price of something. Cendri's Answer: DO NOT FUCKING CARE.

I know that if I get my doctorate, I will get into something for engineering education, and I hope to god I can actually do something for that part of the system.

[seventhe]

I talked about this in my reply to Denis above -- I really think we need to start separating out the parts of the system that are "research > teaching" and "teaching > research", and find a place for each of them who won't sabotage each other.

[ambersweet]

I have a double major in English and Women & Gender Studies, and I have yet to hold a job that had anything to do with my degree(s). I knew this going in. I chose the majors I did because I was passionate about the subjects, I love(d) my classes, and I knew the only way I would get through college is if I were doing something I enjoyed. It still took me three attempts to finish. What I wish is for a more obvious career path for a humanities major; I had a professor tell me that a humanities degree is an incredibly useful degree because it teaches you to read, analyze, and synthesize an argument, which are all valuable skills in the business world. This is true - if you can find an employer who will acknowledge that you do, in fact, HAVE these skills rather than dismissing your degree out of hand. I had a boss who told me a bachelor's degree does nothing but demonstrate your ability to sit still for four years.

One problem is that many humanities degrees have been divided up into "useful" and "academic" versions - my mother taught English with her English degree; now you need a B.A. in education (at least) to teach. English majors used to be able to get jobs teaching, editing, or writing, and now those positions are more likely to go to people with education, journalism, or even creative writing degrees. Meaning what? I can make interesting conversation at cocktail parties, and work in jobs that have less than nothing to do with my degree, and be bored and frustrated and flirt with the idea of getting a master's so I can teach? And don't get me started on my other degree - 9 times out of 10, when I tell people my major, they demand to know what I'm going to do with it. (YOUR MOM, PEOPLE. THE ANSWER IS ALWAYS YOUR MOM.) But it's another arena where it's not-quite-practical enough to be employable - the kinds of jobs I'm interested in as a WGS major are looking to hire people with Bachelors of Social Work or maybe sociology. So, the conclusion I've come to is that the only answer is to get more education, because I just don't have enough to do anything with either of my degrees. :P

[seventhe]

And the fact that you have two degrees and are considering more education to be able to "do something" with them is, I think, indicative of a big gap in the system. I think it's awesome that you pursued things you were interested in because like i said I think that's what a lot of college is about -- and I agree; I wish there was a more concrete pathway from there --> employment.

It's like -- I almost want to say (bear with me here; this is an off-the-cuff thought) that degrees need to become more general, with added specializations. Like if your WGS degree were lumped under something like sociology, so that you could be seen as a fit for more jobs than you are right now? "Sociology with a concentration in Women and Gender studies"...? It seems to me that this happens a lot, and then the work one is interested in suddenly becomes BARRED because your degree has certain words printed on it and lacks certain other words. Whereas you might certainly have the same skill set needed for the job.

(I actually think this "blending" of skill sets happens a lot in the lib arts and humanities. I don't see it a lot in engineering; we can't hire a chemist to be a chemical engineer, and we can't hire a Chem-E to be a chemist, and we can't hire a Mech-E or a BME to be a Chem-E -- there isn't enough overlap in disciplines when you get into what I'm calling the "career" degrees? But in things like English, Literature, Creative Writing -- isn't there a lot of overlap there? Or Social Studies like sociology, women's studies, etc etc? I think they may be more "interchangable" -- not that your degree can plug in and be any other degree, no, but that your skill set can apply to a lot of things outside your degree. Another difference I think between the #2s and #3s?)

[ambersweet]

To earn my degree, I had to take quite a few classes in other disciplines - and WGS is itself an interdisciplinary degree. So I've taken tons of psychology and sociology and anthropology classes, quite a few classes that were cross-listed as Women's Studies and something else, and many classes that COULD have been cross-listed but weren't. This semester, for example, I'm taking a research seminar that could easily be cross-listed as a Criminal Justice class (Research on Women and Crime); one that could be listed as history or sociology class (Women as Healers); and one that is counting toward both my WGS and English degrees (Native American Women's Literature). Another issue, is of course, these recent degrees that people (employers) don't actually have a solid grasp of what the degree actually means.

[owlmoose]

This is an excellent post and I agree with a lot of it. As someone who went to a liberal arts school, then got a professional graduate degree (library school is much more of a category #3 kind of degree than a category #1) and has worked in both traditional and for-profit, career-oriented academia, my perspective is kind of all over the map, but what I have seen does largely fit in with what you say here.

The "traditional student" has been going away for a long time. I took a class on academic libraries in 1998, and the professor told us that, at the time, the "average" college student was 23 years old, had at least one child, and took 5 years to graduate. Twelve years ago. These trends have only gotten more pronounced, and schools that don't take that fact into consideration are going to lose out. Or their students are, or both.

YES to more opportunities for affordable vocational education, yes to giving students who are not yet career-focused more time and freedom to explore, yes to more opportunities for life-long learning. I got a liberal arts education, and that was perfect for me, but it's not going to be right for everyone.

One an issue around #4 that I didn't see in either your post or skimming the comments, though: Americans have so more much pressure to go to college than they did a generation or two ago at least partly because primary and secondary education has gotten so bad here. A college degree is now what a high school diploma used to be: a sign that you have received a basic education, that you can read and write and do basic math and apply critical thinking skills. This, I think, is why you see positions like secretarial work and sales jobs and other kinds of work for which high school used to be sufficient requiring a bachelors. So while I agree that college is not and should not have to be for everyone, I don't see how you fix that without cleaning up the mess that is the rest of our educational system first.

[seventhe]

I very much agree with your last point. As you can see, this post got long, and since Cendri asked about academia I tried to focus my thoughts there, but please don't take the omission of primary / secondary / high school as evidence that I think they are okay, because I think there are so many problems that start there - mainly like you said; I think a lot of families get so focused on getting their kids "into college" that they just overlook where it all starts.

I am fascinated that even in 1998 people knew things were changing, and here in 2010 my university refuses to acknowledge that I, as a part time student, (a) exist and (b) have different needs. It kind of makes me angry!

[wallwalker]

I was discussing this with my boyfriend the other night, and the first thing he mentioned wanting to change about the system was standardized testing, or at least the reliance on standardized testing that our education system has developed. I mean, there were always standardized tests; I took many of them in primary and secondary level school. But there were never as many as there are in my state now, and preparing students for them was never the ordeal that it is now. I've often heard the complaint that all students learn now is how to take tests.

Another possible reason that college degrees are required in so many jobs now: In this economy, people with college degrees are willing to take jobs that didn't used to require them, and the standards have gone up. So naturally people are shunted down, and the people with no college degrees are now in the position where high-school dropouts used to be. I don't have any real evidence to back this up yet, though; need to do research.

[crankyoldman]

SO I REALIZED I NEVER COMMENTED ON THIS DIRECTLY.

It's things like this that ah... why I'm being crazy and thinking about a PhD. And I'm sure they will try to beat it out of me (because that is what they do) but I really just want to help provide OPTIONS. My thing I think I want to research has to do with different types of learners, and how maybe the types of learners we've been focused on may not be the ideal engineers! Invention requires a technical and a creative competency, and with all the issues of energy and transportation we're facing, we need people in there with the ability to invent, innovate, do more than just maintain current systems. And they don't always end up as engineers!

I think that's why educational videogames are appealing to me so much, because that's accessing whole new types of learners. I mean, can you imagine if you learned geometry by PLAYING A VIDEOGAME? It's a powerful tool, for sure (but not a teacher replacement! Underline!). Giving teachers a tool to help reach the kids that just don't. get. lectures. MAKES ME FLAIL WITH AWESOME.

I know I won't be able to make a huge dent in the monolith, but with this PhD program, I will be afforded so many opportunities to do things I really love. Like, most of the graduates from this program end up forming engineering education programs at other schools. I want to go beyond just circle jerking universities. I want to start kids early on Thinking Like Innovators, and they can decide for themselves if college is worth it. I just think the world could benefit from more problem solvers, and I want to help that.

Also, my dad gets to brag at family reunions because he had two daughters and both are pursuing PhDs now (Missy kind of has to, she's in biology).

[seventhe]

There's a lot to be said about "Learning" -- I think in a lot of ways we as a society don't know what that means anymore. Kids learn, but now they don't just have to learn, they have to pass standardized tests. They have to memorize. They have to meet quotas. Now, look, I will be realistic: sometimes you need standardized testing, alright? It can tell you big general things. But it isn't an answer and it definitely isn't a replacement for individualized learning.

I think that there are steps: Learning --> Understanding --> Application. They're all important. (And it gets into the divide between careers/employables above: it's hard to "Apply" a History degree in today's workforce.) But the learning has to be anchored in younger students, and then continued on all the way up to college.

Engineering is tricky! I think it's one of those disciplines where you really do need to have a certain level of intelligence to grasp certain things. And I'm not saying that to floof my own degree or career -- for example, my brain doesn't wrap itself well around philosophical discussions -- but often times going for "smarts" helps PRODUCE an engineer-with-a-degree. Period. Getting a functional engineer, one like my boss who can look at a problem and instantly know how to start and how to solve it and can be innovative in finding THE BEST solution, not just A solution -- that requires experience that school just doesn't have.



Also, my dad gets to brag at family reunions because he had two daughters and both are pursuing PhDs now (Missy kind of has to, she's in biology).

Which is kind of funny, because part of the point I'm trying to make is that big fancy degrees have a huge ego stigma on them that reflects poorly on people who choose alternate paths. ;)

(I know what you mean, though)

[sissyhiyah.livejournal.com]

Oh my God, I could kiss you for this.

[jennyclarinet.livejournal.com]

Good post...I agree that academia isn't all it's cracked up to be. And the cost? Are you kidding me? I don't regret my two music degrees, but I don't think they were worth what I spent on them....especially considering what money I make with these degrees.

I also agree that we make too big a deal about college. At W. Reserve, where I teach, the kids stress out so much about where they're going to go to college that I don't think they're even thinking about what they'll do beyond college. So what if you have a degree in English from Dartmouth? Then what?

I agree that funds should be funneled more into useful research. There are plenty of colleges that are spending tons of research money on really stupid projects. And of course, being a musician, I appreciate your mention of the arts. Musicians, at least, are museums-we are preserving an important part of human culture. Visual arts are important too, but I definitely don't agree with how some of those programs are run and how money is used (like on exhibits that involve virgin Marys soaked in urine).

I'm rambling. It's late.

[first-seventhe.livejournal.com]

I think the arts have a place, and I think there are better ways to encourage young people to contribute to them than making them go through a four-year plug-and-play college program and come out -- under so much pressure and competition? I think?

I mean, I remember in high school senior year when I was under pressure to be a music major (flute performance!) I went to visit a couple schools, and they were like you're going to have to practice 7 hours a day to get anywhere. It's a full-time job, practicing. and I was like, no, I will not ENJOY it anymore. Same with photography: you starve for years shooting portraits for your friends and making a pittance before you can really start to have any kind of income based on your art.

I think there are such better ways we can do this!

[jennyclarinet.livejournal.com]

I agree. The current system spurs bitterness because there's no way that everyone graduating from music or art school can land the big symphony gig or be the next Andy Warhol. But I like your idea of allowing students to further explore those fields in college without trying to make a career out of it.

For the rest of us crazies, there's always education and freelancing!

[red-mage-jerry.livejournal.com]

For the students who fall into #4, this is the responsibility of the secondary school systems! There are plenty of self-supporting, interesting, secure jobs out there that do not require a college degree....BUT, in order to break into those fields, you generally need some sort of background or experience anyway! And the secondary schools don't offer that, unless they're tech schools, which.....there aren't enough of.

Now, granted, many of these jobs are mechanical in nature. But many aren't, as well.

[first-seventhe.livejournal.com]

Agreed! I think some of this got brought up over in the Dreamwidth thread (silly two-journal system, sorry!) but I am definitely in agreement. But I also think

(A) these options could/should be made more obvious to students who (a) might feel a lot of pressure to go to college when they don't want to or (b) don't know these options exist and would be really interested in them

(B) we need to de-stigmatize things like tech schools; those degrees are complex in their own way and those jobs require a level of skill that's difficult and respectable. We shouldn't be looking down on people with two-year degrees, but it happens, and it does a lot. No wonder nobody wants to go there.

(C) Experience, like you said, is a really good point. You get into this vicious circle - can't get hired without experience, can't get experience without being hired. And it's super important. SO how can we help out there? (I don't know; question to the masses and the air, I guess.)