There are lots of useful things I learned in school but school is really what you make of it. I did my best to utilize the facilities that my college provided and got a lot of experience. Others just coasted and took courses, doing nothing outside of the coursework. Ultimately, the education helped me get to where I am. Especially in this industry where connections are everything, school can be a great tool to connect with professors and other students. It was also my gateway into the professional world because I was a good candidate for internships because of my background.
It’s a horribly inefficient way to structure networking and learning tradecrafts, though. Many of the most capable students will miss critical opportunities through no fault of their own - some people are taking care of parents who just happened to start dying during the short time they were enrolled, for example. Others have to work before and/or after classes.
Equally importantly it was built on top of a liberal arts foundation that was never supposed to produce engineers and the sort, and while it fails to enforce a liberal arts education on applied science majors, it also sacrifices its liberal arts programs to make it palatable for tradecraft. Liberal arts are certainly of benefit to tradespeople and everyone else, but it is no longer the reason people enroll - students often bemoan being forced to take even the most introductory courses. It is extremely beneficial for people who do want to pursue these studies and develop their systemic thinking, that they should be allowed to do so, for the benefit of any and every field. But a lit class or two during 4 years of career training and extracurriculars does not provide that.
I think the current system has found itself traveling down a dead-end path, and that it is now bound to be replaced as its haphazard construction will prevent it from overcoming its growing challenges.
I’m referring to the US system in particular here as I think that was the context. Even most of the top names have turned their undergrad programs in particular into exploitative diploma mills. I think the replication crisis is properly seen as a symptom of a fundamentally misbalanced system and that it won’t resolve itself by continuing business as usual.
I’m a very big fan of education and access to education. I think we’ve gone about this all wrong, and like I said, to all of our detriment except the administrators.
There are lots of useful things I learned in school but school is really what you make of it. I did my best to utilize the facilities that my college provided and got a lot of experience. Others just coasted and took courses, doing nothing outside of the coursework. Ultimately, the education helped me get to where I am. Especially in this industry where connections are everything, school can be a great tool to connect with professors and other students. It was also my gateway into the professional world because I was a good candidate for internships because of my background.
It’s a horribly inefficient way to structure networking and learning tradecrafts, though. Many of the most capable students will miss critical opportunities through no fault of their own - some people are taking care of parents who just happened to start dying during the short time they were enrolled, for example. Others have to work before and/or after classes.
Equally importantly it was built on top of a liberal arts foundation that was never supposed to produce engineers and the sort, and while it fails to enforce a liberal arts education on applied science majors, it also sacrifices its liberal arts programs to make it palatable for tradecraft. Liberal arts are certainly of benefit to tradespeople and everyone else, but it is no longer the reason people enroll - students often bemoan being forced to take even the most introductory courses. It is extremely beneficial for people who do want to pursue these studies and develop their systemic thinking, that they should be allowed to do so, for the benefit of any and every field. But a lit class or two during 4 years of career training and extracurriculars does not provide that.
I think the current system has found itself traveling down a dead-end path, and that it is now bound to be replaced as its haphazard construction will prevent it from overcoming its growing challenges.
I’m referring to the US system in particular here as I think that was the context. Even most of the top names have turned their undergrad programs in particular into exploitative diploma mills. I think the replication crisis is properly seen as a symptom of a fundamentally misbalanced system and that it won’t resolve itself by continuing business as usual.
I’m a very big fan of education and access to education. I think we’ve gone about this all wrong, and like I said, to all of our detriment except the administrators.