Posted by Rick Denney on November 27, 2001 at 10:40:04:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Gross injustices posted by Matt G on November 27, 2001 at 08:04:38:
Matt, you said that most people go to college with the expectation that the school has put together a concise program that should cover their future needs. That sounds reasonable, but in reality, it's not that simple.
The objective of college is not job training. The objective of college is to provide exposure to knowledge in those principles that don't get learned on the job. When will a practicing musician ever sit down and learn theory? When else will he have the opportunity to listen to a good record library to learn music history?
The same is true in engineering school, or in any other course of study. I studied a variety of topics that I almost never use in day-to-day professional work, but knowing all that stuff provides a foundation of general knowledge that makes it easier for me to learn what I need to know as I go.
There were no business classes in my engineering schooling, except for the same economics class that everyone gets. It is just as well they didn't teach it there: College professors aren't the best source of information about real business. I filled in the gap between knowing how to balance a checkbook and knowing how to run a business by apprenticing under business people on the job. That's how we get most job skills.
College, on the other hand, is the one opportunity we have to learn about things that don't directly support our job. Where else would I learn physics? How else could I justify taking courses in thermodynamics, as a traffic engineer? I don't use that stuff in my job, but I have to know about it well enough to know where my limits are--that's a professional responsibility and a condition of my engineering licenses. And knowing about it gives me insights into models that might have application to traffic flow. Had I been a music major, I would have had little other opportunity to be exposed to a variety of music, theory, history, and all sorts of topics that are more difficult if not impossible to learn on the job. Nobody ever thought of college being important for the job training of musicians before the last 50 years or so, unless they intended to teach it to others, or if they needed some certification before they could get work or join the union (such as the "performing ticket" earned--at least at one time--in England). Most practicing musicians gain much more job skill from apprenticing with someone who does it, and this was true for most professions until the last half-dozen decades.
It is true that most college students expect college to be an extension of high school. They want the teachers have a carefully worked out program for them to follow so that they don't have to plan their educational strategy--just like high school. But that's not the purpose of the university (which is derived from the notion of a broad education in many disciplines). I agree with you up to the point where counselors, who should help students understand the requirements, often don't exercise the leadership for which they are responsible. I also agree with you that college professors seem more able than most to waste time and energy playing silly games with each other. But that doesn't absolve the student of his responsibility to make sure that at the end of four years he will have met all the requirements for a degree.
Most schools require an enormous amount of work in any course of study. The notion that students can spend much of their time on leisurely pursuits is a byproduct of the movies we see, but we should remember that those movies are fantasies, and they are popular with college students because they portray a lifestyle not possible for most students. Most of my college friends who spent a lot of time "socializing" with their buddies at the pub didn't make it through the program. When they failed, was that their professors' fault? Of course not. 18-year-olds are still teenagers, but the time has come for them to take responsibility for their own actions.
I entered architecture school at a university well known for that course of study. At that school, it was a four-year program, with a two-year master's program (unlike most architecture programs, which are designed to be 5+1 programs). That school adopted that approach precisely so that their students who were on scholarship could finish their work before they ran out of money.
But it was a brutal program. Three or four all-nighters a week was the norm, because of the time required to do all those drawings and build all those models. Of course, had I not spent a lot of time racing bicycles and exploring photography, I might have had more time to sleep. My beef with that program was not that the work was so much, but that the work didn't serve my educational needs, and the professors could not explain to me what was required to do well in their classes (a fault likely shared in music schools).
When I switched to engineering, the lab work diminished dramatically. But the study time rose exponentially. My grades suffered because I didn't spend that time. Part of the reason I earned an MS degree at night school in the following years was to demonstrate to myself that I could be a disciplined student. Had I done what it took to make the grades that reflected my potential, I'd have easily worked 60 hours a week doing homework beyond the assignment to learn the material more thoroughly. Yes, college students really ought to have the discipline to go beyond the assignment.
At the end of the day, the only complaints I've seen here that sound reasonable from this distance of time are those that suggest a counselor didn't sit down with the student in his first semester (or before) and lay out a course of study with a clear description of what it would take.
As to the attitude problem, well, as I said before: Welcome to college. Learning how to deal with jerks is part of growing up.
Rick "who has seen no shortage of jerks in the professional world" Denney