Teaching for the job - or shaping the future?
By David W. Burcham and Michael A. Genovese
from the Daily Breeze, 3/08/2011
Microsoft founder Bill Gates told the National Governors Association last week that colleges and universities need to rethink their spending priorities. Administrators, particularly those at state-funded institutions, should consider which of their departments contribute most to job creation when deciding how funding is distributed.
On this issue, Gates is dead wrong.
Higher education is regularly under attack. Funding from states is on a decades-long decline. Conservative pundits denounce the liberal bent of the American professoriate. And with the economy mired in recession, the cost of four years at an expensive college or university looks to many like an investment they cannot afford.
Now, add Gates' contention that public colleges are wasting money when they spend it on programs that are not believed to directly spur job growth. "The amount of subsidization is not that well correlated to the areas that actually create jobs in the state, that create income for the state," he said.
The billionaire didn't name any specific fields, but the implication was clear: Expand science and business offerings, and diminish humanities and the arts. Why bother spending money on Sophocles or Mozart, when it could go toward business classes or Linux?
But this view is shortsighted. Few workers in the future will have only a single job, or even a single career, in their lifetime. The new, more competitive job market requires workers who
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can analyze situations, solve problems and learn new skills during their lifetime. These are cognitive abilities that a full education provides. Humanities and science majors perform better on tests that measure critical thinking, complex reasoning and written communication skills, according to data from the nonprofit Council for Aid to Education. Training students for specific careers is a laudable goal, but if college graduates are to succeed and create new technologies, they must also have the cognitive strengths provided by study of the liberal arts. <a href"http://www.dailybreeze.com/opinions/ci_17570013">More</a>