In the past few months there seems to be an unusual amount
of news about Canadian universities - much of it not very good news. From the
stories of the misogynistic Facebook pages at Dalhousie, the strikes at U of T
and York, the numerous reports of professors plagiarizing others' work, and to
the lack of either transparency or accountability, Canadian universities appear
to not be doing their job. Furthermore there are serious accusations that the
universities are not preparing young people for careers in the real world and
that they are failing to provide reasonable job opportunities to within its own
hallowed halls.
I would suggest that if universities are failing in their
jobs, it is because their job descriptions have profoundly changed and no one
has told them. Universities use to know what they were suppose to do. They were
a place where professionals such as doctors, lawyers or engineers went to
memorize complex information or a place when rich kids went when they didn't
know what to do with their lives. Only a relatively small handful of very bright people
went to university to study to become an academic. For most a general arts degree was a
very significant accomplishment. Students who could afford it went to university to what
was frequently called a liberal arts degree. When I went to university (I don't
mean to sound like an old fogy) every student had to take two sciences, one
language (other than English), one history and I think either a sociology or a
psychology. It didn't matter what we wanted to be - UNB were determined that we
would have a broad base of knowledge. Certainly in the mid 1960s when
universities were expanding and therefore their standards were lower (how else
would I have got in) - it was perfectly okay to go to university to "find
yourself". Except for the above professions, very few occupations
(including teaching) required a degree
and almost none required an advanced degree. It was even argued by some that "the
true purpose of education is to produce citizens". (Archbishop
of York)
Universities in 2015 have only two purposes. One is to train
a workforce. There is no need for frills or general information courses -
students are there to get a piece of paper so that they can get an entry level
job. In the rush to produce as many students as possible in the most economical
fashion, universities don't have the capacity or time to teach people how to think
critically. I suspect that while employers say that they would like their new
employees to be able to think, what so many of them mean is that they want the
staff to think like them. The second function of universities is apparently to train enough
graduate students so that there will be sufficient numbers of TAs to do the
marking and later to become PhDs who will teach part time.
There is a third purpose that really has very little to do
with learning at a university. The staff working there need to generate enough
funding, generally through research grants, to pay their salaries - so that
they can do research. Those professors are not working at a university, they
are working in a research factory.
It is not surprising that universities are failing. They are
poorly equipped to train people to work in the real world if for no other
reason than most of the professors never have (worked in the real world).
Universities are letting students in when everyone knows that in many of the
professions there are already too many people with degrees who are under
employed. Universities bureaucracies and the funding mechanisms are too cumbersome
to generate programs that are meaningful and available when needed. But most
importantly of all universities were never designed to quickly train people in
job specific skills. At their best, universities were able to give young adults
the time and the opportunity to learn how to think and to write critically; to
be able to analysis data and to come up with their own answers.
It quite frankly boggles my mind that so many graduate
students are apparently frustrated and angry that there are not more jobs for
them at the university level. If they had just talked to their professors in
their second or third years or if they had just read one of the myriad of
articles they would have realized that there could not be enough jobs for all
of them. But for them to do that - they would need critical thinking skills
No comments:
Post a Comment