I went to university and discovered that unlike that naive view he has of it it is mostly a course in how to tolerate a lot of bullshit from profs and for someone who already taught myself a lot before I got there it was mostly a realization how outdated that whole system has become unless the profs themselves are incredibly motivated (which is relatively rare), the system itself certainly encourages them to do the minimum possible to stay up to date with the material for courses they teach and instead focus on their research.
I have a much longer response, but I’ll try to make a short one. I think there’s a lot more a college degree does (should?) offer/signal, but over the last 50 ish years, that has largely eroded away to just being a professional training program or a gatekeeper to a job. Higher ed in society he mostly turned to social efficiency as its guiding principle instead of several other curricular philosophies. Combine that with the increasing and intense research pressure and it’s the exact situation you describe. Neoliberalism has pushed away long term thinking and risk from corporations, so that burden of risk is taken now by universities (and young people in the form of graduate students) which can be subsidized by government grants. This funding scenario pushes professors to focus on grants and research and to not care about their teaching. It’s not good.
Not sure if it was ever the way you describe but I agree that it should be focused on teaching more than just be a professional training program. However, it is not even a good professional training program at this point.
I went to university and discovered that unlike that naive view he has of it it is mostly a course in how to tolerate a lot of bullshit from profs and for someone who already taught myself a lot before I got there it was mostly a realization how outdated that whole system has become unless the profs themselves are incredibly motivated (which is relatively rare), the system itself certainly encourages them to do the minimum possible to stay up to date with the material for courses they teach and instead focus on their research.
I have a much longer response, but I’ll try to make a short one. I think there’s a lot more a college degree does (should?) offer/signal, but over the last 50 ish years, that has largely eroded away to just being a professional training program or a gatekeeper to a job. Higher ed in society he mostly turned to social efficiency as its guiding principle instead of several other curricular philosophies. Combine that with the increasing and intense research pressure and it’s the exact situation you describe. Neoliberalism has pushed away long term thinking and risk from corporations, so that burden of risk is taken now by universities (and young people in the form of graduate students) which can be subsidized by government grants. This funding scenario pushes professors to focus on grants and research and to not care about their teaching. It’s not good.
Not sure if it was ever the way you describe but I agree that it should be focused on teaching more than just be a professional training program. However, it is not even a good professional training program at this point.