Roger Schank, one of the leading voices in the field of education, thinks the old university is dead. In a recent post on his Education Outrage blog, Mr. Schank made the case for a new professional university. His entire post is well worth reading, including the description of the new professional university he proposes.
For those disinclined to follow the link, here are a few provocative quotes from Mr. Schank’s post:
- The chasm between the ivory tower and the real world – “I once had lunch with a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. I asked him how it felt to be in charge of a fraudulent institution. He was shocked by the question, of course, but I continued. How many of the people who attend the University of Illinois do you think go there because they think they will get jobs upon graduation? He supposed that all of them did. I asked if they actually did job training at Illinois. He agreed that they didn’t. I pointed out that most of the faculty there had never had jobs (except as professors) and might not know how to do any other jobs. He agreed.”
- Colleges and universities do what their faculty know best – “I once suggested fixing this state of affairs while I was a professor at Yale. I discussed this with the President of Yale at the time, Bart Giammati. He replied that Yale didn’t do training. But Yale does do training. Yale trains professors.”
- Professors know a lot about a subject which is different from knowing how to solve real world problems or get things done – “Most universities have copied the “training of intellectuals and professors model of education” and have disregarded the idea that future employment might be of major concern to students. Professors can do this because they are forced by no one to teach job skills. They don’t really know much about job skills in any case.”
- An alternative model: The Professional University – “It is time for a change. I [Roger Schank] propose the creation of a Professional University. By this I mean a university that teaches only job skills. It would do this by creating simulations of the actual life of someone who works in a particular job. . . . We can do this. It just takes money. Existing universities won’t help. They will be threatened by it. Yale can keep producing professors and intellectuals. But most countries in the world need way fewer professors than they need well educated functioning professionals. Would graduates of the Professional University be able to speak, write, reason, and solve complex problems? Of course. Those skills would be built into every program.” (emphasis added)
Colleges will tell you they don’t train, they educate. They will stress they teach critical thinking and communication skills and “develop the whole person,” yet many of their graduates don’t know what’s happening in the world or what to make of it and can’t write a coherent argument or solve a complex problem with ambiguity. And, of course, Mr. Schank is right: many of these institutions do in fact train — they train students to be good students in the model which has served the professors well.
I’m not arguing for training to the exclusion of education. I just don’t know why colleges can’t do both: develop well-informed critical thinkers who can solve problems and communicate well and also know how to do something and make a contribution.
This problem manifested itself to me in a stark manner when I graduated from law school and went to work at a major law firm. Law school was great at teaching me the law and how to analyze a legal issue. But when I joined the firm I quickly realized I didn’t know how to practice law. Fortunately, law firms knew it was their job to teach new lawyers how to practice; they knew you couldn’t count on law schools to do that. I was fortunate because I had joined an exceptional firm that had some remarkable lawyers who had high standards and amazing ability. Because of them, I learned how to practice law and do it well. Yet I always wondered why some of this couldn’t have occurred in law school, especially during that third year that was otherwise superfluous and apparently tacked on primarily to yield additional revenue for the schools. Of course, I knew the answer: law schools couldn’t teach students how to practice law because most of the professors had never practiced themselves, in other words, they didn’t know how. I recall thinking at the time that no one should be allowed to teach unless they had practiced law for at least 10 years. Perhaps a similar rule should be imposed on undergraduate programs.
Is it too much to ask a college to both educate and prepare students for the workforce? Apparently it is or more colleges and academic departments would be doing it. But some institutions and some programs do. And there is an opportunity for other institutions to set themselves apart and secure their futures by doing both well. Time will tell how many respond to the challenge. Don’t hold your breath.
Finding My College 
The majority of those graduates who lack job training or skills are Business majors. So, the upshot of Business schools failing to educate their undergraduates is that we should let Business profs control the entire curriculum? Great idea.
For what it’s worth, this guy’s opinion isn’t reflected in employer surveys, which generally indicate that they value basic skills over job training — the problem is that graduates lack basic skills and so can’t receive job training, not that college grads lack job training. What employers look for here are internships. After that, employees who have the background to be trainable. I think the result of a good college education is that you can learn quickly on the job, not that you know exactly what to do when you walk in the door — because every employer’s environment, technologies, policies, etc., are very different.
The other problem is that these claims are very general: what specific classes do you think are needed for students to gain workforce preparedness? I think your example from law school is an exception rather than the rule: law schools prepare graduates for a specific field and profession. Teaching practice should be a part of it — that’s specifically a vocational degree. Paralegal studies should be the same way.
But that’s just it: what’s being asked for here isn’t a professional university. It’s a vocational school. Most of what you want you could get in a two year degree. It used to be called “secretary’s school.” That’s not a university, though.
The typical courses most valuable to grads right out of college probably involve training in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint (we have 100 level courses for this because students need to use these programs as students), speech (100 level course), writing (100 level courses), business writing (300 level course), math (100 level course). What’s next? Data entry? That’s too employer-specific: there are probably half as many database programs as there are employers, and anyone who can work an Excel spreadsheet can learn this work quickly.
So what about all of those administrative jobs out there? Non-legal jobs? My school offers a BS in Forensic Science, and what employers in the field say is that they want our graduates to have more chemistry and biology — in other words, more academic work.
If you want to make these demands, suggest specific courses — and I mean -specific-. Keep in mind that any tech training students get in college may well be out of date by the time they graduate.
If I were to take your post to heart and want to redesign curriculum, where would I start?
First point: I will not attempt to speak on behalf of Mr. Schank. I’m sure he and I would disagree on many points. Moreover, he’s far more knowledgeable about education and learning than I am. I wouldn’t presume to be in his league.
As for my thoughts on the matter, you asked where would I start. I’d start someplace that most faculty members never dream of starting: with the employers and clients who employ the school’s graduates (or whom they wish would employ their grads in the case of institutions with pathetically low job-placement records).
Some colleges do this, but not many. I recall my one son’s college asking their alumni, what should we be teaching that we’re not? How can we improve our curriculum? How can we better prepare our graduates for the demands of the workplace? This should be SOP. (Not surprisingly, his alma mater has a stellar job-placement record.)
Your example of your college’s forensic science program makes my point. I suspect professors designed a curriculum THEY thought was best. As it turns out, the market is telling them something different. Better to get the input up front.
As someone who has run a $2 billion company with over 2,000 employees, I think I can safely say that employers are not telling colleges they value “basic skills” over specialized knowledge and skills necessary for certain fields (what you seem to call “job training”). In fact, we expect both. And we don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect colleges to develop both. Ivory Tower academics (not all academics are of this ilk) like to deflect this expectation by saying we “don’t train.” “We’re not a vocational or trade school.” But that doesn’t cut it. It’s one of the reasons so many newly minted grads are underemployed, including many from all of those institutions who claim to focus on “basic skills” but in actuality don’t even do a very good job of that. Employers want new hires who have the skills and the specialized knowledge required of a complex, highly specialized labor market, and who can think deeply, write well, solve problems, handle ambiguity and make sound judgments.
Finally, it’s important to distinguish between curriculum and rigor (or lack thereof). Poorly designed and bloated curricula are part of the problem. The lack of rigor is the other. And, unfortunately, it extends well beyond the boundaries of the business department.
I don’t mean to overstate my case — yes, employers expect both. What I tried to say was that they look for “ability to do stuff” to come from student internships, which I think you’ve emphasized for good reason on this blog.
I am also making reference to widely reported employer surveys, most of which have appeared in the Chronicle over the last two or three years. It’s one thing for one employer to say they expect something, and another to collect aggregate information from many employers. Most of what I’ve been hearing from survey data is that employers are shocked at a lack of basic skills (particularly writing, and no, they’re not talking about liberal arts grads here, by and large — you can read Academically Adrift for the distribution of skills growth across different majors. It’s not the English or science grads who can’t write), lack of problem-solving ability, and lack of self-motivation.
Next, I’d like you to observe your response to my question. I am asking you, a former employer, right now, what specific classes, training, or skills that you yourself would want from a new college graduate that you don’t think most college grads have.
If you can’t answer this question simply and directly yourself, with your experience and background, then I think you should see that there are more parts to the problem than just what colleges are or aren’t doing.
I will say that faculty members did indeed go to employers before developing the FS major at my institution, so I’m not sure what happened. Miscommunication? Didn’t listen? Different expectations now? I’m unsure.
A complete reply would be too long for this comment section, but I’ll be glad to share my views in a longer post, which I’ll put together the next few days. And lest the point get lost, I think some of our college grads are amazing, both in ability and character. There are some institutions, programs and faculty that clearly have a transformative impact on many of our young people. In critiquing the myriad of ways we’re falling short, it’s important not to lose sight of this fact.
I’ll have more to say in reply to your question this week or by Monday at the latest.
That’s fantastic — specific requests for courses or learning objectives are more productive than anything else.
To me, though, it’s not that complex. You give me a list of things that you want college grads to be able to do, and I can work that into curriculum.