[30Days]: A Ramble On Academia
WHAT YOU WOULD CHANGE ABOUT ACADEMIA.
Well, okay.
I am going to separate this out into two parts: some big, fundamental things that I think need discussing, and some smaller, within-the-system, more reasonable things I think are relevant.
It's going to become a ramble and I am sure there are a lot of things I am going to miss. I have definitely NOT said everything I have to say about academia; this came out being more about academia as a whole, and I could write another 8000 words on effing grad school. But I don't want to let this eat up 2 hours of my evening. Have a sampling.
The thing is, I look at the system of academia right now and I see a giant clusterfuck. I'm looking from a couple different directions, mind -- the bearer of an undergraduate degree in engineering; a professional chemical engineer; a professional chemical engineer in the field of research; a graduate student; a part-time graduate student; a professional involved in the hiring process, looking to hire new graduates. Even just looking at the system from one of these points of view, you can see something's out of alignment. But when you get the 360-degree, high-def view of it all, it just looks ...off.
College seems to serve two purposes, and they're not exactly interchangeable, nor are they overlapping well, and... alright, here:
When I was a high school junior/senior and looking into colleges, nobody asked me what do you want to study. They asked, what do you want to do?
There is a huge difference.
There's a portion of people who go to college to study something. They want to study literature, film, photography, music, history, art, philosophy (even math and some sciences fall into this category...!). They want to read papers and textbooks, write analyses, produce works. And it isn't that these jobs don't translate into employment options -- but the way they do it is general; a degree tells an employer that you have developed a certain skill-set (reading things, understanding details, writing papers; giving presentations; obeying timelines for homeworks and projects; computer skills; etc) (and your GPA can be a measure of how well you have developed said skill set) during your four years of college: a skill-set that is useful and relevant, but unrelated to the subject of your degree. Many people don't directly use the things from their undergraduate degree to obtain employment, or during said employment. It is an indirect boost.
Now, there's another portion of people who to go college to get a degree that will take them into a specific career. You might be able to guess that, as a chemical engineer, this is the group I fall into. Business majors, engineers, computer scientists. Some extremely lucky, talented, or privileged art/photography/music majors, yes. Pre-med. Raw sciences (chemistry, biology, physics) moving towards PhDs (pre-grad?). Your path in life is a lot more specific, here -- you know you're going to apply for certain jobs, and if you do decently well, you're probably going to get one of those certain jobs because they are slotted exactly for people with your degree. And it isn't a job - it's a career, a thing that you studied and then took said learnings to the workplace and followed.
Notes:
1. These are generalizations, of course.
2. There's bitterness from the people in the second group towards the people in the first group. I'll admit I'm still a little pissed off, seething and hurt and wanting recognition, because I didn't "get" to study "fun stuff" or "easy stuff" in college. It's stupid, yes. Here is your full disclosure. Moving on.
I think there is, and should be, a place in both academia and industry for the following:
#1 is what I sort-of see as one of the purposes of graduate school. When you attend graduate school, it's an academic free-for-all, in a way: you're only answerable to your advisor and whoever is giving you your grant money, and whatever topic within those bounds that interests you is free to be looked at. You can get a PhD by analyzing "something that didn't work", if you look into the why and how. Graduate degrees in the liberal arts fields allow research into a kaleidoscope of topics. I do think there's a place for this, and I think that in the profit-driven, purpose-driven, everything-for-a-reason world academia is now we risk losing the genuine appreciation for learning.
BUT.
I also see too many students coming out with PhDs who are... unemployable. Too many students spend too much time looking into one thing, focusing on one thing, and whether it's their advisor or their own limited vision or a lack of understanding about how industry works? I don't know, but we've interviewed probably 2 dozen Chem-E PhD recent graduates and have hired... none. And this is the thing. Getting a graduate degree is an exploration into the world of academia at its core; students who get degrees and then want to move into industry are often missing the basic freaking concept of application. And I think this is a huge disconnect, here, universities wanting to output PhDs but too caught up in their internal (academic) system of work - and companies, looking for something different but not in a way that helps alert the university to the ways of industry. There's a huge divide in looking at stuff for stuff's sake, and looking at stuff that has a reason and a purpose.
Hell -- we could use more "reason and purpose" research people in the medical field, finding new and awesome ways to cure cancer. We could use them in the energy field, making fuel cells a net gain rather than loss, making solar energy actually efficient and affordable. So often academia is its own little world - and wants to be, and they hoist this flag of knowledge for knowledge's sake! like their defense.
I think it has its place, but I am not sure I'm buying it as all academia can be.
#2 and #3, I think, are what the system does now - I am not going to say "does well", although I think in some cases it does very well and in others it fails completely. What I would like to see is a better differentiation. I have a lot of friends who went to school, got that sociology degree (apologies to any readers who have a sociology degree; I am thinking of one specific friend who is not on LJ) and then... couldn't get a job! Why can't I find a job. I have a degree! All the things that are offered are secretary positions and administrative assistants and customer service. And I sat and sympathized and wondered, what kind of job did you expect? There's no guaranteed employment at the end of that degree.
See, we tell people, "Want a better job? Go to college!" and I am not saying that the jobs aren't better overall. But often it isn't a magical cure-all for employment, unless you pick up the kind of degree that translates into a career. You enter the market with degree X and you are competing with degrees A-Z. A chem-E enters the market and is only competing with chem-Es for chem-E jobs. And I don't think this message gets out, really, in a way that's fair at all -- I think we can do way, way better.
Do we want a "generic" degree that just dumps people out with a core skill set? I don't know. In a lot of ways it would be helpful, both to those who apply for it and employers who don't care if you're a history major or a sociology major as long as you have above a 3.0. At the same time... who would want to do that? Part of the fun of college is all of those interesting classes where you get to learn about color photography or read feminist literature. And you learn a lot in a Women's Studies degree that's fucking important, even if it doesn't instantly translate into a job. It isn't a solution. But -- where are you going to employ a ton of photographers? There's a balance. I think we need to find it. I think students should be more aware of job/career opportunities, colleges should help to make degrees affordable, and industries should maybe work to make more degrees and jobs applicable, if possible.
And. #4.
#4 is I think where we really fucking fail in our system. The obsession with "Get a better job? Get a degree" is ridiculous. College isn't for everyone. It shouldn't be for everyone, because everybody in the US could have a degree and we'd still need McDonalds employees and garbagemen, and they'd just have degrees. Plus, college as it is right now really isn't for everyone. The system is so fucking internal, so entrained and prejudiced, and -- not everybody learns the same way, and that is fucking okay.
I am all for the creation and improvement and establishment and anchoring of 2-year, 3-year, 4-year vocational, technology-based training schools. All for it. I think these places can offer us a hugely valuable work force - in a world where our manufacturing landscape is hugely changing - and setting up a way to learn and prove one's-self that isn't based around a test-taking GPA is going to be vital if we want to use all the intelligence we have that maybe doesn't take tests well, or is maybe dyslexic, or maybe struggles with words, or with maths. (Note: if these people want to go to college they should fucking go to college, yes, I am all for colleges being so much more inclusive of people's learning styles!!! Because they, um, kind of suck at that right now. I am saying that: those who do not want to go to college should have a plethora of other awesome options.)
And I think this is a good lead-in to my final point here, not touched in my numbered list but important nonetheless: Non traditional students are the way of the future, schools. Heads fucking up, okay?
There need to be more options for people who want to go back to school but are working and have established lives with established needs and costs. There need to be options for people who want to change degrees or change careers, options that don't link you to a choice you made as a dumbass 18-year-old but don't enslave you for the next 10 years in part-time mayhem. There need to be options for part-timers -- respected fucking options. There needs to be a realization that just as people are deciding to get married later, have children later -- we're deciding on our actual loves later, our careers, and there should be openings to make those changes that do not bankrupt people: financially, socially, physically, emotionally.
Period.
Which becomes the question, what can we do now, within the system, to help more people? Because I think a lot of the fundamental problems are -- there aren't answers. I don't have answers; I barely have ideas. I can point and make "MEH" sounds in the direction of the problems, but that's about it. But can we guide things now to help us out in the interim, help guide us in the way I think will help everybody? Well, uh, MEH.
I told myself I'd stop writing this at 8:00 and it is already 8:05 so I am going to post but I KNOW I HAVEN'T SAID ALL I WANT TO SAY so uh feel free to give me some leading questions if you are so inclined etc etc seriously, this doesn't even get into the way I would GUT graduate school and START OVER in so many places so.... dammit Cendri way to give me a topic I could cover for a week >.>
This is part of my 30 Days of Posting meme - feel free to check out the schedule of posting! My month is full, but if any of the posts make you want to ask for something else, go ahead and leave a comment anyway! DW || LJ
This entry was originally posted at http://seventhe.dreamwidth.org/36057.html, which has
comments. Comment there (with OpenID) or here, it's all good.
Well, okay.
I am going to separate this out into two parts: some big, fundamental things that I think need discussing, and some smaller, within-the-system, more reasonable things I think are relevant.
It's going to become a ramble and I am sure there are a lot of things I am going to miss. I have definitely NOT said everything I have to say about academia; this came out being more about academia as a whole, and I could write another 8000 words on effing grad school. But I don't want to let this eat up 2 hours of my evening. Have a sampling.
The thing is, I look at the system of academia right now and I see a giant clusterfuck. I'm looking from a couple different directions, mind -- the bearer of an undergraduate degree in engineering; a professional chemical engineer; a professional chemical engineer in the field of research; a graduate student; a part-time graduate student; a professional involved in the hiring process, looking to hire new graduates. Even just looking at the system from one of these points of view, you can see something's out of alignment. But when you get the 360-degree, high-def view of it all, it just looks ...off.
College seems to serve two purposes, and they're not exactly interchangeable, nor are they overlapping well, and... alright, here:
When I was a high school junior/senior and looking into colleges, nobody asked me what do you want to study. They asked, what do you want to do?
There is a huge difference.
There's a portion of people who go to college to study something. They want to study literature, film, photography, music, history, art, philosophy (even math and some sciences fall into this category...!). They want to read papers and textbooks, write analyses, produce works. And it isn't that these jobs don't translate into employment options -- but the way they do it is general; a degree tells an employer that you have developed a certain skill-set (reading things, understanding details, writing papers; giving presentations; obeying timelines for homeworks and projects; computer skills; etc) (and your GPA can be a measure of how well you have developed said skill set) during your four years of college: a skill-set that is useful and relevant, but unrelated to the subject of your degree. Many people don't directly use the things from their undergraduate degree to obtain employment, or during said employment. It is an indirect boost.
Now, there's another portion of people who to go college to get a degree that will take them into a specific career. You might be able to guess that, as a chemical engineer, this is the group I fall into. Business majors, engineers, computer scientists. Some extremely lucky, talented, or privileged art/photography/music majors, yes. Pre-med. Raw sciences (chemistry, biology, physics) moving towards PhDs (pre-grad?). Your path in life is a lot more specific, here -- you know you're going to apply for certain jobs, and if you do decently well, you're probably going to get one of those certain jobs because they are slotted exactly for people with your degree. And it isn't a job - it's a career, a thing that you studied and then took said learnings to the workplace and followed.
Notes:
1. These are generalizations, of course.
2. There's bitterness from the people in the second group towards the people in the first group. I'll admit I'm still a little pissed off, seething and hurt and wanting recognition, because I didn't "get" to study "fun stuff" or "easy stuff" in college. It's stupid, yes. Here is your full disclosure. Moving on.
I think there is, and should be, a place in both academia and industry for the following:
- Studying for the sake of studying; art for the sake of art; increasing humanity's knowledge pool.
- Obtaining a degree which represents a general skill set, with which to enter a tier of general employment options which draw on that skill set but nothing more specific.
- Obtaining a degree which is a path towards a specific field of employment, which is more complex / specific / demanding of very certain kinds of knowledge/understanding skills, with which to enter a career.
- People who, for whatever reasons - financial, personal, intelligence, or just plain don't fucking want to - do not attend college but would like to have reasonable, self-supporting employment options.
#1 is what I sort-of see as one of the purposes of graduate school. When you attend graduate school, it's an academic free-for-all, in a way: you're only answerable to your advisor and whoever is giving you your grant money, and whatever topic within those bounds that interests you is free to be looked at. You can get a PhD by analyzing "something that didn't work", if you look into the why and how. Graduate degrees in the liberal arts fields allow research into a kaleidoscope of topics. I do think there's a place for this, and I think that in the profit-driven, purpose-driven, everything-for-a-reason world academia is now we risk losing the genuine appreciation for learning.
BUT.
I also see too many students coming out with PhDs who are... unemployable. Too many students spend too much time looking into one thing, focusing on one thing, and whether it's their advisor or their own limited vision or a lack of understanding about how industry works? I don't know, but we've interviewed probably 2 dozen Chem-E PhD recent graduates and have hired... none. And this is the thing. Getting a graduate degree is an exploration into the world of academia at its core; students who get degrees and then want to move into industry are often missing the basic freaking concept of application. And I think this is a huge disconnect, here, universities wanting to output PhDs but too caught up in their internal (academic) system of work - and companies, looking for something different but not in a way that helps alert the university to the ways of industry. There's a huge divide in looking at stuff for stuff's sake, and looking at stuff that has a reason and a purpose.
Hell -- we could use more "reason and purpose" research people in the medical field, finding new and awesome ways to cure cancer. We could use them in the energy field, making fuel cells a net gain rather than loss, making solar energy actually efficient and affordable. So often academia is its own little world - and wants to be, and they hoist this flag of knowledge for knowledge's sake! like their defense.
I think it has its place, but I am not sure I'm buying it as all academia can be.
#2 and #3, I think, are what the system does now - I am not going to say "does well", although I think in some cases it does very well and in others it fails completely. What I would like to see is a better differentiation. I have a lot of friends who went to school, got that sociology degree (apologies to any readers who have a sociology degree; I am thinking of one specific friend who is not on LJ) and then... couldn't get a job! Why can't I find a job. I have a degree! All the things that are offered are secretary positions and administrative assistants and customer service. And I sat and sympathized and wondered, what kind of job did you expect? There's no guaranteed employment at the end of that degree.
See, we tell people, "Want a better job? Go to college!" and I am not saying that the jobs aren't better overall. But often it isn't a magical cure-all for employment, unless you pick up the kind of degree that translates into a career. You enter the market with degree X and you are competing with degrees A-Z. A chem-E enters the market and is only competing with chem-Es for chem-E jobs. And I don't think this message gets out, really, in a way that's fair at all -- I think we can do way, way better.
Do we want a "generic" degree that just dumps people out with a core skill set? I don't know. In a lot of ways it would be helpful, both to those who apply for it and employers who don't care if you're a history major or a sociology major as long as you have above a 3.0. At the same time... who would want to do that? Part of the fun of college is all of those interesting classes where you get to learn about color photography or read feminist literature. And you learn a lot in a Women's Studies degree that's fucking important, even if it doesn't instantly translate into a job. It isn't a solution. But -- where are you going to employ a ton of photographers? There's a balance. I think we need to find it. I think students should be more aware of job/career opportunities, colleges should help to make degrees affordable, and industries should maybe work to make more degrees and jobs applicable, if possible.
And. #4.
#4 is I think where we really fucking fail in our system. The obsession with "Get a better job? Get a degree" is ridiculous. College isn't for everyone. It shouldn't be for everyone, because everybody in the US could have a degree and we'd still need McDonalds employees and garbagemen, and they'd just have degrees. Plus, college as it is right now really isn't for everyone. The system is so fucking internal, so entrained and prejudiced, and -- not everybody learns the same way, and that is fucking okay.
I am all for the creation and improvement and establishment and anchoring of 2-year, 3-year, 4-year vocational, technology-based training schools. All for it. I think these places can offer us a hugely valuable work force - in a world where our manufacturing landscape is hugely changing - and setting up a way to learn and prove one's-self that isn't based around a test-taking GPA is going to be vital if we want to use all the intelligence we have that maybe doesn't take tests well, or is maybe dyslexic, or maybe struggles with words, or with maths. (Note: if these people want to go to college they should fucking go to college, yes, I am all for colleges being so much more inclusive of people's learning styles!!! Because they, um, kind of suck at that right now. I am saying that: those who do not want to go to college should have a plethora of other awesome options.)
And I think this is a good lead-in to my final point here, not touched in my numbered list but important nonetheless: Non traditional students are the way of the future, schools. Heads fucking up, okay?
There need to be more options for people who want to go back to school but are working and have established lives with established needs and costs. There need to be options for people who want to change degrees or change careers, options that don't link you to a choice you made as a dumbass 18-year-old but don't enslave you for the next 10 years in part-time mayhem. There need to be options for part-timers -- respected fucking options. There needs to be a realization that just as people are deciding to get married later, have children later -- we're deciding on our actual loves later, our careers, and there should be openings to make those changes that do not bankrupt people: financially, socially, physically, emotionally.
Period.
Which becomes the question, what can we do now, within the system, to help more people? Because I think a lot of the fundamental problems are -- there aren't answers. I don't have answers; I barely have ideas. I can point and make "MEH" sounds in the direction of the problems, but that's about it. But can we guide things now to help us out in the interim, help guide us in the way I think will help everybody? Well, uh, MEH.
- Let's work to better construct degrees to be applicable to the real world, for people who want to go to college to get a better job and end up bitten in the ass because of it.
- Let's extend college and college-like opportunities to lots of people, not just the middle-and-upper-class white kids whose parents are guiding them towards the (effing) Ivy Leagues. Let's let everybody know what their options are, and let them get there.
- Let's open up both undergrad and graduate school to part-time students. Being a part-time student is already fucking hard. Let's not make it harder on these people who are sacrificing their time, their personal money (you try getting a scholarship for part-time school!), many of their other life goals, their energy and spoons and personal lives for this. Let's help them, because part-timers are deathly hard workers and usually they're doing this for a reason: and don't we want to encourage people like that? Not discourage them?
- Let's think about better ways to get people who aren't made for college into a system made for them, rather than expecting everybody to fit the "4 year pull-and-pump degree" system.
- Let's see more money - from industry, from corporations, from government, wherever - going into really helpful research like medicine, energy, and technology.
- Let's not forget the arts: let's keep some funding going there, too.
- Let's figure out a better system to make cross-discipline career changes, because let's face it: not everybody wants to do what they think they wanted to do when they were 16.
- Let's be awesome.
I told myself I'd stop writing this at 8:00 and it is already 8:05 so I am going to post but I KNOW I HAVEN'T SAID ALL I WANT TO SAY so uh feel free to give me some leading questions if you are so inclined etc etc seriously, this doesn't even get into the way I would GUT graduate school and START OVER in so many places so.... dammit Cendri way to give me a topic I could cover for a week >.>
This is part of my 30 Days of Posting meme - feel free to check out the schedule of posting! My month is full, but if any of the posts make you want to ask for something else, go ahead and leave a comment anyway! DW || LJ
This entry was originally posted at http://seventhe.dreamwidth.org/36057.html, which has
comments. Comment there (with OpenID) or here, it's all good.