Universities do not exist to 'train', produce 'skills' or generate 'impact'. They exist to create new knowledge and teach about it. Any assertion to the contrary is in error, and is destroying everything it touches.
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And then lobby to reduce their taxes, so the costs of training employees is shifted onto the shoulders of students, parents, and taxpayers. It's socialism for job training, capitalism for whatever value trained employees provide their employers and its customers.
The crux of why Unis are struggling: knowledge cedes to info - we expect to go and find it when we need it not to carry it around in our heads; so when students pay unis they want skills they can resell. If we value knowledge, we should pay Unis, but students can’t be expected to foot the bill.
Worse still, universities do not (or should not) give students the impression that they are customers who have paid for grades and should receive good ones as part of the purchase.
Well, maybe you assume it's a given, but you left out teaching existing knowledge. It's not just teaching the new knowledge created. "New" knowledge is meaningless outside the context of the existing, and even historically old knowledge.
I hate that kind of neoliberal newspeak. See also, a film or a song described as a "product" and its makers as "content creators". It‘s deliberately soulless & designed to reduce everything to a purely transactional purpose.
This. Everything needs to have a "measurable value" without which it's contributions to our lives can't be quantified. It's ridiculous. It's a slap in the face of every artist or scientist.
Hmmm. Working in a university department focussed on the process of food production I want to say you’re taking a very purist line. We largely teach industry focussed MSc courses and do a lot of contract research. What’s your objection?
I mean probably the answer is that those programs can exist but they don’t have to be the only type of program and don’t have to be the description of the function of universities as an institution
I like that vocational schools are making a comeback. They provide the opportunity for people to learn skills by which they can earn a living. Too many people graduate from university without marketable white collar job skills. Critical thinking seems to have been dropped from the curriculum as well
My "Experimental Life & Career", as it happens,...
& 'now', eh? Are perspectives & critiques today "new" or "better", have we learned anything over the last 25yrs?
Or, maybe, that much of "the same" had been spun through before, why was so much "more of the same", continuing to happen, "*then*", eh?
They do research and teach about medicine. I agree that later stages are more jobs-based, but that should not be seen as core mission. Also, Med is rather sui generis in this respect.
But medical schools right in there from the beginning of the concept of a university system. See also dentistry, vets, engineers, accountancy, law, pharmacists, teachers etc. Vocational training quite a lot of the sector and always has been.
I think we're talking past each other a bit here - I think if the *point* of the education is seen as narrowly vocational, it's not university, so e.g. loads of law and engineering grads do something completely different and we've mostly dispensed with the BEd. (1/2)
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When it comes to answering the question of what Universities are for, who do you think:
- Does decide?
- Should decide?
- Has some kind of stake in that decision?
Somehow we’ve forgotten this
Lots of local people want university services.
Universities are good candidates for issuing local public money:
https://publicseminar.org/2020/05/unis4all-an-open-letter-to-the-u-s-higher-education-community/
They exist to do whatever the people who finance and run them want them to do.
A liberal arts education was designed to prepare the privileged children of the upper class to rule.
The land grant schools had more pedestrian goals.
There are plenty of professions that require a level of discipline and rigour to train people, often to MSc these days, undergrad not suffucing.
Imperial College, London even started it - and has maintained its position.
Imagine charging people to improve their civilisation. Madness.
& 'now', eh? Are perspectives & critiques today "new" or "better", have we learned anything over the last 25yrs?
Or, maybe, that much of "the same" had been spun through before, why was so much "more of the same", continuing to happen, "*then*", eh?