Charles Murray says acquiring a bachelor's degree has become a kind of certification of adulthood, one that doesn't really tell an employer whether its bearer has necessary knowledge. What's more, the functional requirement of a BA for a wide range of jobs in our society forces people who neither want nor are suited to a comprehensive university education to go to college. Murray sees a better way: a system of certification in various disciplines. Excerpt:
An educational world based on certification tests would be a better place in many ways, but the overarching benefit is that the line between college and noncollege competencies would be blurred. Hardly any jobs would still have the BA as a requirement for a shot at being hired. Opportunities would be wider and fairer, and the stigma of not having a BA would diminish.Most important in an increasingly class-riven America: The demonstration of competency in business administration or European history would, appropriately, take on similarities to the demonstration of competency in cooking or welding. Our obsession with the BA has created a two-tiered entry to adulthood, anointing some for admission to the club and labeling the rest as second-best.
Here's the reality: Everyone in every occupation starts as an apprentice. Those who are good enough become journeymen. The best become master craftsmen. This is as true of business executives and history professors as of chefs and welders. Getting rid of the BA and replacing it with evidence of competence -- treating post-secondary education as apprenticeships for everyone -- is one way to help us to recognize that common bond.
That would mean the end of the liberal arts ideal of an educated person. Not good. On the other hand, it could mean that a truly liberal education would be more meaningful for those who sought it -- in terms of the substance of courses offered, I mean, because professors wouldn't be required to overgeneralize to accomodate large numbers of students who didn't really want to be there in the first place.
As I recall, the Netherlands more or less does this right now. They separate out in middle school, I believe, the students whose talents put them on a vocational track, those whose talents will suit them for professional school, and those (relative few) suited for a classic university education. And then the system provides a secondary education for graduates on each track. I have a Dutch friend who went straight from high school to photography school, and became a very successful commercial photographer in Amsterdam. Another Dutch friend went straight from high school to business school, and is now a successful executive. There isn't the stigma in Holland of not having gone to university, because people see a university education in a different light there -- a more realistic light, it seems to me. (BTW, if any readers have a more accurate or updated view of the Dutch system, please let's hear from you; I'm operating off an understanding that's 20 years old).
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I think Murray's got a point there, insofar as the BA doesn't actually tell us anything about how qualified a person is for a job. I'm Canadian, so I can't really speak to how things are in the U.S. of A., but from where I am getting a BA has become a rite of passage . . . and a right, not a privilege. Truly mediocre students are being awarded their piece of paper just because they (or Mummy and Daddy) paid for it, and the post-graduation job search becomes a nightmare. Why? Because employers either assume that would-be employees' degrees denote a certain level of competence, or they assume that employees' degrees are relatively meaningless and that all candidates are mediocre.
Right now, my Master's degree and I are working at a mall, retailing women's clothing. I spent this morning in a meeting, reading through a company publication and correcting the numerous glaring grammatical mistakes that abound because somebody's BA didn't indicate that he/she couldn't properly follow the basic rules of the English language.
We hear all the time about the woes of "dumbing" down our education in High Schools and even colleges, but to me this indicates a seeming obliviousness to the complexity of the demands of technology and instant worldwide information. There is much more of different types of things to learn just in order to navigate. While it impoverishes our children growing up without a "classical" education so that they have little understanding or ability to interpret their cultural context and thus are also ill equipped for their study at a University liberal arts program, this also can be seen as a side effect of that big corporate argument for just training programs for utility that would only be increased by determining a person's utility at a young age and then determining the course of their life based on some standardized scoring method. Admittedly to all appearances many persons might benefit from a little determination as there seems to be so much floundering. But as long as people are a jot on a balance sheet in our society support for a liberal education will be nonexistent.
I agree a lot, obviously with the overuse of college. But not as strongly as the author. I would have to see the curriculum to gauge this better, but my concern is that we would go too far from "dumbing down" to "dumbing up". I do think that colleges in the U.S. at one time had a good to very good balance of purity and utility. But as if driven by some law of entropy (political no doubt) they have been losing this balance. As one poster has mentioned as well, technology has entered the picture, requiring skills that are not purely "vocational" or "liberal" but somewhat a mix. Again, a balance question. The math and science behind many of these professions, simply is not vocational enough to be handled well enough by what the author proposes.
colleges sell lecture seats in a classroom.
Seat time in lectures in history, science, math.
Digital colleges can reach billions, billions and billions worldwide.
google: MIT, UC Berkeley and Yale open courses.
Education will comepletely change in the Digital-age of 21st. century
colleges sell lecture seats in a classroom.
Seat time in lectures in history, science, math.
Digital colleges can reach billions, billions and billions worldwide.
google: MIT, UC Berkeley and Yale open courses.
Education will comepletely change in the Digital-age of 21st. century
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