Thinking About The Purpose of the University Today.

Posted on | November 2, 2009 | No Comments

It has been a while since I sat down and put mind to keyboard here at JamesEd, sorry about that, I am back.

I was reading today in the TimesOnline that 6^th form students in the UK are facing the very real prospect of not being able to enter a University to continue their education, because the demand for seats is out striping the availability.

Is this a bad thing?

I am not so sure it is bad at all that students may have to wait to get their University education or look in a different direction for training, in fact it might be the best thing to happen to a student.

I suspect many students globally, like it or not, will now have an opportunity to go out and get their hands dirty, maybe even as a volunteer, in the work world and maybe even stumble upon a vocation they love!

Maybe, just maybe, our high school students will get a bit of focus before they enter the ivory tower and this can only make a better student and a better University.

What makes me sit up at attention is the possibility that our Universities are letting us down, letting the students down.

My worry is that the modern University is rushing off madly in all directions as it tries to match its courses, Colleges and curricula to a changing world and I am not sure any University, even the Harvard’s, Stanford’s and Cambridge’s have taken a good look at themselves and asked, “why are we doing any of this?”

The simple problem with the University today is that it lacks focus beyond educating for the sake of educating.

Sure there are trades such as medicine and accounting but even with them the focus is missing and it is generally hoped that in the end the student will figure out how all the courses come together.

I sat down with three of my colleagues and we imagined how the global University education complex could actually work and work well.

This is our manifesto.

Universities are re-conceptualizing their curriculum and revising their course offerings.  It is our view that we need to focus our efforts beyond short term ideas about what it will take to properly educate future professionals.

What we know for certain is media is undergoing fundamental change in how it is produced, managed, distributed and, importantly, consumed. The New York Times has more online than hard copy readers.  Online content of all major publications now has dedicated staff. Content is richer, not only in words and images, but also in its use of what are referred to as social tools. This ranges from simple interactivity to the latest, and possibly even short-lived phenomenona like Twitter. We also know that internationalism has morphed into globalization because media has the ability to erase borders printed maps use to create our frame of reference about other places, people and cultures.

Current thinking about the future of university programs is attempting to catch up with, and train students for, these existing realities. But another component of globalization of media is reflection about the effects of a much bigger, but much more homogenized,  world. Localism and community are becoming sought-after qualities in a world that is becoming increasingly larger, anonymous and remote. In fact, individualism is the direction toward which the world is moving:

MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, 50 million individual blogs increasing at an estimated rate of two per second. Individuals are using these tools to create a sense of community in a world that is increasingly impersonal and asocial. Are our University programs keeping up?

The real potential of communication tools today is individual empowerment. Reconceptualizing  programs of study are not taking into account this local, communal, individual phenomenon emcapsulated within the “global reach of ideas.”

Whatever the area of study you are engaged in, we need to consider where the world is going, not where it is now. The present is the past. Current is outdated.

We need to train our students in a curriculum offering skills that will be useful in the emerging world. If we focus on the present or popular ways of educating  students, we are simply putting window dressing on what we have been doing for 10 years and what schools around the world have been doing for much longer. We are going where we and everyone else has been.  As Nikita Khruschev, himself a peasant, once famously said: “You can put lipstick on a [rabbit], but it is still a [rabbit].”

We are suggesting that each one of us focus on the where education is going so we can all collectively ask and answer “What is any University curriculum doing beyond training students for a variety of traditional  jobs? Why are we putting forward a particular program?” Then: “This is what we should do and this is why we should do it.”

We need to consider some basic facts about the nature of today’s students: Who are they?  What will they need?  Where will they work? They need skills and ways of thinking that will enable them to act locally in building the future for their nation.

So, we ask that every one who is engaged in education today to consider going where no other program is going or has ever gone. We ask that every one of us considers a curriculum that will truly focus our program on the idea to create, inform and inspire community.  ” Rather, we propose that we educate our students in the thinking and doing  skills that will enable them to function locally to craft the community, the nation and the world that is their future, not ours.

Yes, we also should want our students to be entrepreneurial, but intrapreneurial as well.

We are suggesting educating and training our students not to work in local, alternative or mainstream environment, but allstream environment. The skills needed to create community and a mainstream environment are identical. But the conceptual focus is different and more authentic given the nature of our students today and the world in which they will live and work.

Your thoughts?

Comments