[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

[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?