« Behaviour Modelling: Did it Go Out With A Whimper? | Home | BC Gas Tax to Start Tomorrow - So What? »

The Role of Universities - Knowledge, Skills, Citizenship

By crooky | June 27, 2008

I read a really interesting post over at Dooney’s Cafe yesterday on the role of universities in educating young people and commented on it at length (aka a rant). I wanted to expand on my views on my own blog because I was tired when I wrote those comments and I feel like I came across as a bit of a lunatic.

My position on post-secondary education is that universities have a three-fold responsibility to the young people who spend their time and money at their institution:

1. To bequeath knowledge

This is the point that I expect to get the least amount of argument about. Universities, by their nature, are designed to educate. The kind of knowledge you gain varies wildly based on the program that you are in and the teachers that you have the priviledge of working with.

In a nutshell, I believe that it is the responsibility of the university to show you a world that you didn’t understand or didn’t understand as completely. When you leave the university, you should have gained new insight into the world around you and by extension, the ability to think more critically about the world in which you live.

The point that Stan Persky seemed to be trying to drive is that we (society) are too focused on hard skills and not focussed enough on the broader cultural learnings that a university education provides. On this point, I disagree. Most university programs do not spend enough time on skills and spend too much time on trying to mold us into “well rounded citizens”. I think that happens naturally when you’re in the university environment.

2. To teach marketable skills

This is where I run into some resistance amongst my more academically-inclined friends. I believe that the university also has a big responsibility to ensure that graduates of its programs have marketable skills. Granted, the ability to think critically is an important skill to have but this should be complemented by the ability to write concisely, the ability to manage projects and hard skills in the technical areas (if that’s where your studies take you).

Some university types that I meet seem to think that expecting to learn hard skills at a university somehow sullies the mandate of the university and commoditizes education. I disagree. I think that without teaching skills with an application in the world outside the unviersity, the university is just furthering its reputation as an “ivory tower”.

3. To connect with the community

This is an area where most universities need the most improvement. I’ve seen small, limited-scope programs like co-op and special speaking engagements where the university makes an effort to connect what’s taught in the classroom to what’s going on in the community but there’s so much more that could be done.

As a member of the Alumni Association at SFU, I hear many alumni who want to give back to the university by working with students in their programs and helping them put their “book learning” into context. These well-intentioned individuals are often frustrated in their efforts to reach out to the students in a meaningful way.

There are exceptions to this and some programs are very, very good at tying the program to the community but by and large, most programs do a poor job of this.

Stan Persky replied to my comment and thinks I missed the point of his article - which was a criticism of one auther’s view that some kids aren’t smart enough to go to university. I argue that my points are relevant because I’m posing the argument that universities are sometimes not smart enough for their students.

I’m actively working within the post-secondary system to correct this issue but it’s an uphill battle.

*********************
Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.

Share/Save/Bookmark

Topics: Technology |

Comments