billw@navajo.UUCP (02/26/87)
Actually, there are two problems with universities: One is that they are too job/career oriented - you can get a degree in CS, for example, where all you've really learned is how to program; You can be an EE without having much hope of picking up new and/or old technology. The other problem is that they are not sufficiently job/career oriented. It's quite possible to get even an advanced CS degree and still be unable to program your way out of a paper bag, or be totally mystified by anything not closely resembling the system you are used to; or to be an EE without ever having learned how to solder. ==== These are all technical/science majors however, leaving out the majority of college educated people with their degrees in art history or philosophy or english or whatever; leaving them rather unprepared for much of anything. The single most depressing point is that science and engineering majors are usually required to take the same early english/humanities courses as their liberal arts counterparts, but if a BA type has to take any science or math AT ALL, it is usually a very watered-down version of what BS types have to take. If you think that I am wrong, get a copy of the "Trivial Pursuit" game, and compare the difficulty of the "science and nature" questions with the questions from any other category... BillW
dean@violet.berkeley.edu.UUCP (02/26/87)
Relevant to the topic at hand. You may not agree with it, but it raises interesting concerns. Quoted without permission from the New York Times "Letters" section, 2/23/87: ------------------------------------------------ College, Unfortunately, Is Nothing But a Product ------------------------------------------------ To the Editor: In 1914, John Alexander Smith, professor of moral philosopy at Oxford University, told the members of the incoming class that if they were diligent in their studies they could, at the end of their time there, expect to have absolutely no useful knowledge. They could, however, expect to be able to recognize when a man is talking rot. The attitude was unremarkable. College was then a haven for the small minority of people who were truly seeking wisdom.... [Today,] Kids go to college because Wall Street, itself gulled, will not hire the undocumented tyro. This is silly, since compared with a period of apprenticeship, a dose of amition and luck, a degree is not so useful in business.... Mortimer Adler once asked a group of students how many of them, were they to be guaranteed enough money to be comfortable for the rest of their lives, would not return to class the following day. Every hand shot up. He told them they might as well leave right away, since they were wasting their own time and his. College not a product? College is nothing but a product. Were it otherwise, Plato, Cicero and "all that" would not be at a discount, and the higher education would be recognized as an avocation for driven eccentrics rather than a way station for unimaginative children. Bruce Allen Kings Point, L.I., Feb 13, 1987 -Dean (dean@violet.berkeley.edu)
ekwok@mipos3.UUCP (02/27/87)
In article <2615@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> dean@violet.berkeley.edu (Dean Pentcheff) writes: >Relevant to the topic at hand. You may not agree with it, but it raises >interesting concerns. > >Quoted without permission from the New York Times "Letters" section, 2/23/87: >------------------------------------------------ >College, Unfortunately, Is Nothing But a Product >------------------------------------------------ >To the Editor: This kind of sweeping statement means very little. Even soap can arguably be nothing but a product, or something more than a product. > In 1914, John Alexander Smith, professor of moral philosopy at >Oxford University, told the members of the incoming class that if they >were diligent in their studies they could, at the end of their time >there, expect to have absolutely no useful knowledge. They could, >however, expect to be able to recognize when a man is talking rot. The British are very interesting people, but just because somebody with a generic name says something does not make it right. For the record, a British educator once told me that the first 12 years of an Englishman's education is meant to keep him off the streets. You see, education is such an ill-defined thing, I can say that the only objective of education is to enable one to recognize rot. And that will be wonderful indeed. > The attitude was unremarkable. College was then a haven for the >small minority of people who were truly seeking wisdom.... [Today,] Kids >go to college because Wall Street, itself gulled, will not hire the >undocumented tyro. It's definitely not true that, in those days, they were "truly seeking wisdom". Rather it is a kind of finishing school for the aristocratic class. Not that there aren't some noble souls. But a significant portion are in there for a foreign office post abroad, for example. > This is silly, since compared with a period of apprenticeship, a >dose of amition and luck, a degree is not so useful in business.... I am not sure. I don't think anybody could be able to run our modern Fortune 500 Corporation effectively without some formal education - I didn't say MBA. This formal education means, for example, a good grasp however acquired of many disciplines: corporate finance, organization theory, strategic planning and positioning etc. These theories are usually organized and put together by academic observers working in an environment that provide them the freedom to "theoretize" these ideas. I think business schools grow out of necessity. I don't think Wall Street would be this big if, in order to learn the trade, you have to apprentice with J.P. Morgan Loeb Kuhn etc. I would say the prosperity of our age is significantly affected by the training and theories development at business schools. > Mortimer Adler once asked a group of students how many of them, >were they to be guaranteed enough money to be comfortable for the rest >of their lives, would not return to class the following day. Every hand >shot up. He told them they might as well leave right away, since they >were wasting their own time and his. Again I don't agree. Morty's students don't speak for everybody, neither does he speak for all educators. I am working hard so that I'll earn enough money to retire from work, to study physics. I am sure I am not the only one in the whole world. Again, Morty is making a moral judgment about education which I don't think is justified. Much of the benefit of education is to prepare one for a vocation, including that of a professor. Why does he feels his time is wasted. He get paid for educating them, and they pay him to be educated. If he has any wishful thinking about their deal, it is his unrealistic expectation of how others should behave. Education failed in his case that it didn't enlighten him to the fact that nobody can claim a monopoly on moral absolutes. > College not a product? College is nothing but a product. Were >it otherwise, Plato, Cicero and "all that" would not be at a discount, >and the higher education would be recognized as an avocation for driven >eccentrics rather than a way station for unimaginative children. > Your implicit assumption is that the classics are inherently good and that are now by the wayside is gross injustice. I happen to think otherwise. The modern man is now enlightened to the fact that what plato says is logically inconsistent, that what the greek thinkers say are curious at their time, and as irrelavant in theirs as in ours. The modern man has matured from his romantic adolescence, ready to take on the harsh reality of the universe that we live in. The modern homer and plato are the scientists, engineers musicians, novelists. In order for the modern man to be "educated", it is necessary to refute untruth and irrelevance - or to discount, using your word. That does not say that the greek thinkers are not historical curiosities, but let's not make them anymore than that; even they would find it silly. --
martin@mipos3.UUCP (02/27/87)
In my experience, the split between humanities and science/engineering majors works both ways. The requirements are usually equally onerous (or equally undemanding) both ways. Both classes of people tend to cherry-pick their "unfavorite" fields for easy courses--and both tend to complain that they have to take "real" courses in these other fields, while those other guys get away with taking the basket-weaving-equivalency specials. You may think you had to take "real" humanities courses; I'll lay two to one you took the introductory survey courses the real humanities majors do their best to petition/place out of. You've already seen that most humanities types go for things like "Astronomy 1: Like, You Know, The Universe, No Math Required." Personally, I rather enjoy taking "real" science courses for recreation-- they're so easy compared with the humanities... --Martin Harriman, sometime major in Literature (Classics, Greek and Latin)
andres@ut-sally.UUCP (02/27/87)
Distribution:na In article <495@mipos3.UUCP> ekwok@mipos3.UUCP (Steve Dallas) writes: >I don't think anybody could be able to run our modern >Fortune 500 Corporation effectively without some formal education - >..... >I would say the prosperity of our age is significantly affected by the >training and theories development at business schools. If this is true, then how do you account for the problems we're having? Last month's trade deficit was $15,000,000,000 (looks big when it's written out, doesn't it?), and our exports hit their lowest level in 3 years. The next recession, when it comes - and it WILL come - promises to be a monster - in fact, by historical standards, we've never gotten out of the last one. 7% unemployment is prosperity? Perhaps that second sentence is correct. Perhaps the first one, too, but I don't see much evidence of it. I think rather some street smarts - knowing what sells, and why - would be a lot more useful, and what arrogant 23-year-old b-school grad has that?
rsk@j.cc.purdue.edu.UUCP (02/28/87)
In article <496@mipos3.UUCP> martin@mipos3.UUCP (Martin Harriman) writes: > You may think you had to take "real" humanities courses; I'll lay two > to one you took the introductory survey courses the real humanities > majors do their best to petition/place out of. I'll take that bet. As a Physics/EE undergrad, and an EE grad, I've taken graduate-level courses in the humanities, including constitutional law, abnormal psychology, modern European history, and 19th century English literature. Aced them all, too. [Okay, how much did we bet? ;-) ] And in partial response to your other comments: after taking well over 200 credit-hours of courses, I still think the hardest topic in general is physics; in particular, quantum mechanics is the hardest thing I've ever had to get through. The hardest humanities course I've ever had was the law class; it was also the best one. Rich Kulawiec, rsk@j.cc.purdue.edu, j.cc.purdue.edu!rsk
gunzler@ucla-cs.UUCP (02/28/87)
Since when is the trade deficit an argument against "the prosperity of our age?" We have a trade deficit because we consume more of other countries produce than they want of ours; this isn't prosperity? (Actually, the current deficit corresponds quite closely to foreign purchases of U.S. Treasury paper; that is, the debt we are aquiring outside our borders is not representative of some fundamental economic imbalance, but is an explicit loan from them to us. How did you think we managed to double our budget without raising taxes? Everyone in the world has been buying our paper - because we've offered ridiculously high rates, approaching 20% on long term bills.) (Calculate the return on a 19% investment after 30 years sometime, and compare it to, say, 15%.) All of which is to say, if the person who was deriding the value of business training had had some, he might have realized that a trade deficit, per se, does not suggest a lack of prosperity. Mitch Gunzler Comments always appreciated.
desj@brahms.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (03/01/87)
In article <4724@shemp.ucla-cs.UCLA.EDU> gunzler@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU (Mitch Gunzler) writes: > (Actually, the current deficit corresponds quite closely to foreign >purchases of U.S. Treasury paper.... Everyone in the world has been >buying our paper - because we've offered ridiculously high rates, >approaching 20% on long term bills.) Mr. Gunzler doesn't let the facts get in the way of his arguments. A quick look in yesterday's paper tells me that 30-year Treasury bonds are yielding 7.51%. Of all Treasury notes and bonds, the highest current yield is May '09-'14, selling for 142.3 to yield 7.85%. But no doubt Mr. Gunzler doesn't have access to a newspaper, so he couldn't be expected to know this. -- David desJardins
andres@ut-sally.UUCP (03/03/87)
Not that this has anything to do with miscellaneous science,but he's talking about me. In article <4724@shemp.ucla-cs.UCLA.EDU> gunzler@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU (Mitch Gunzler) writes: > > Since when is the trade deficit an argument against "the prosperity >of our age?" We have a trade deficit because we consume more of other >countries produce than they want of ours; this isn't prosperity? Not if they don't want our stuff because it isn't as good as theirs. My argument is that 7% unemployment and a declining middle class isn't prosperity, and that the trade deficit is a symptom of our recent inability to (buzzword) compete. Remember when "Made in Japan" meant "inferior", and when 5% unemployment was a cause for alarm? Some people are doing very well these days, no doubt, but too many aren't. > (Actually, the current deficit corresponds quite closely to foreign >purchases of U.S. Treasury paper; that is, the debt we are aquiring >outside our borders is not representative of some fundamental economic >imbalance, but is an explicit loan from them to us. How did you think >we managed to double our budget without raising taxes? Everyone in >the world has been buying our paper - because we've offered ridiculously >high rates, approaching 20% on long term bills.) > (Calculate the return on a 19% investment after 30 years sometime, >and compare it to, say, 15%.) Great. They sell us what they make, then lend us back the money at usurious rates. We doubled our budget primarily by inflation and borrowing, not by expanding the economy. We do have to pay back those loans, you know. > All of which is to say, if the person who was deriding the value of >business training had had some, he might have realized that a trade >deficit, per se, does not suggest a lack of prosperity. > You know nothing about me. How do you know what "training" I've had? I was not deriding the value of REAL business training, only the academic kind, where you don't deal with real people and real money. I did not mean to imply that the trade deficit meant anything more than what I say above. I should have made myself clearer.
eugene@pioneer.UUCP (03/03/87)
I just wanted to point out that I find it amusing that the trouble is
perhaps not really with universities, but is a trouble with the real
world looking too much to universities. The last 6 postings seem to
indicate this.
From the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers:
--eugene miya
NASA Ames Research Center
eugene@ames-aurora.ARPA
"You trust the `reply' command with all those different mailers out there?"
"Send mail, avoid follow-ups. If enough, I'll summarize."
{hplabs,hao,ihnp4,decwrl,allegra,tektronix,menlo70}!ames!aurora!eugene