Christopher R. Merlo wrote:
On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 5:02 PM, David Krings <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote:
A university is supposed to train interested candidates in a field
of choice with the goal to make them subject matter experts in that
field.
That's actually not true, and your apparent belief in this untruth is
probably what has led to your seemingly very strongly felt distaste for
university education.
Huh? I got two university degrees and did so voluntarily. So what you say is
clearly not the case. My point is that someone who for example takes a BSEE
program at Alfred State College is required to have 132 credits for
graduation. From those 132 credits 60 credit hours are for liberal arts
classes and other sciences that are non-major. Not all of those may be totally
off topic, but I don't get why a BSEE student has to take american history
again or take an arts course (or even more than just one). The 13 years K-12
ought to have covered that. I also think that a high school graduate should be
capable of properly expressing thoughts in speech and writing and not needing
yet another round of English courses. I got my BSEE degree at a non-US
university in a seven semester program with a total of 154 credits and as
mentioned before only 3 courses were not that much related to engineering.
The purpose of a college or university is to provide the student with an
education, so that the student may go on to contribute back to society.
Ah, c'mon! Reading books to children or planting trees or donating blood or
driving people to their doctor's appointments - that is giving back to
society. Getting a university degree is for the sake of getting a better job
with better pay and ideally get some more exposure to a subject that one
likes. How does getting a degree in finance and becoming a greedy investment
banker give back to society? I can see getting a degree in social work being
something that gives back to society. Or do you mean that graduates get better
paying jobs and thus pay more taxes and that helps funding government programs?
I agree with the rest that you wrote and I don't think it collides with what I
wrote earlier. My point is that compared to other countries US universities
focus way too much on a broad education rather than on transferring
specialized skills and knowledge of a specific subject. And I think that is
why foreign workers especially in IT have an advantage. I'm not saying that an
extra writing course is useless or that art history is utterly unimportant,
but I think that is something that shouldn't be part of a university program.
David
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