Posted on 06/03/2016 8:52:15 AM PDT by Lorianne
Short, intense directed apprenticeships that teach students how to learn on their own to mastery are the future of higher education.
So it turns out sitting in a chair for four years doesn't deliver mastery in anything but the acquisition of staggering student-loan debt. Practical (i.e. useful) mastery requires not just hours of practice but directed deep learning via doing of the sort you only get in an apprenticeship.
The failure of our model of largely passive learning and rote practice is explained by Daniel Coyle in his book The Talent Code (sent to me by Ron G.), which upends the notion that talent is a genetic gift. It isn't--in his words, it's grown by deep practice, the ignition of motivation and master coaching.
Using these techniques, student reach levels of accomplishment in months that surpass those of students who spent years in hyper-costly conventional education programs. The potential to radically improve our higher education system while reducing the cost of that education by 90% is the topic of my books Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy and The Nearly Free University and the Emerging Economy: The Revolution in Higher Education.
Let's start by admitting our system of higher education is unsustainable and broken: a complete failure by any reasonable, objective standard. Tuition has soared $1,100% while the output of the system (the economic/educational value of a college degree) has declined precipitously.
A recent major study, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, concluded that "American higher education is characterized by limited or no learning for a large proportion of students."
'Academically Adrift': The News Gets Worse and Worse (The Chronicle of Higher Education)
(Excerpt) Read more at charleshughsmith.blogspot.jp ...
You old Boomers should have not made college for everyone lol.
Don’t disagree in general, but it depends on how those 4 years are used. My buddy’s daughter just graduated and after an internship will be a Physicians Assistant, which pays well and will allow her to live and work anywhere she chooses. Total time in college was 5 years in a combined accellerated program. She worked hard, now will reap the rewards, as it should be.
Going back in tine, to the Late 1800s?
The world needs ditch diggers, too.
College isn’t for everyone. Getting people who shouldn’t be there out will be better both for them and it will lower the cost for those who are there.
Not just ditch diggers. Why shouldn’t software developers and engineers learn the same way? You learn way more by doing than sitting in a classroom.
True. I’ve been using Udemy.com for a bunch of classes on new languages.
No more apprenticeships. No more on the job training. Business should not be burdened with training people who fail to get an education. Either you learn the trade on you own dime, by your own initiative, or you can dig ditches, flip burgers, and continue to live in your parents basement.
Why should companies be required to train people when a college education is available to virtually anyone, and will be paid for at taxpayer expense.
And why would any corporation hire anyone when they can import low cost labor from all over the world, or send the work to a multitude of low labor cost countries?
This goes against the entire concept of free trade, shareholder value, and capitalism in general.
You’re assuming a college education “trains” people in any meaningful way for most jobs.
“The world needs ditch diggers, too.”
I remember humans digging ditches when I was a kid. Use the pick for awhile, set it aside, shovel out the dirt for awhile, then back to the pick.
No more.
Congrats to buddy’s daugther and God Bless!
Mike Rowe (Dirty Jobs) is all over this concerning manual skill occupations.
If you don’ think those jobs are important, call a Poly Sci or Gender Studies grad when your toilet overflow some night and you don’t know what the hell to do.
As college is simply an extension of high school now, it has become the new high school diploma required for application for even the most mundane of jobs. Want to be a gardener and legally in the United States? You will need to show a horticulture degree. An office clerk should have a communications degree, a ditch digger should have at least an associates degree.
Business has discarded the mechanisms of teaching employees basic skills and instead focuses on narrow education targeted specifically at their job, as too many hours are being spent on sexual discrimination training, racial discrimination training, team building, homosexual acceptance, workplace anger issues, etc, etc, etc.
To the tune of 120 hours a year spent on training not related to a job performance skill, and failure to pass these brain washing courses will result in termination at the next performance review.
Business also has little reason to discard the current system; when they do hire on college graduates, they don’t have to worry much about the employee failing those critical re-education courses, as most often, those graduates could teach them by rote. One friend’s daughter was hired as part of a team of new college hires to replace half the staff at a midwest location.
She looked on in horror as the recently indoctrinated were instructed to immediately report any leftover employees for any speech or actions which could possibly be construed as being against company policies (no, not theft or job performance, they were looking for comments disparaging a guy in a dress.)
One of the more ‘difficult’ tasks assigned to her that utilized her vast college education was to put up posters all around the office declaring the space to be a ‘safe space’ with rainbows, and to politely request the removal of any photos which showed nuclear families (unless they were interracial.)
The afternoon task was to patrol the parking lot looking for any ‘graphics or designs’ on employee cars which might disparage any group, to take photos of those offending bumper stickers and decals. On the list were ‘traditional religious designs excluding minority religions’, ‘non-inclusive political messages’ and of course, the dreaded battle flag.
Offenders were handed a printed reprimand with a photo of the vehicle as well as a photo of the employee, dismissed without pay for the rest of the day, and told to either correct the issue with the vehicle or it would no longer be permitted on property and the employee dismissed for violating company policies.
After 8 weeks, the fresh faced students who learned little of what the company actually does were sent off to fix the next office. She declined the transfer and was dismissed and has since found out that she’s banned from employment with any associated company. Permanently.
The black mom cries when her son, the 1st in the family graduates. How will we compete with that? Having me pay for her sons education doesn’t help enough people.
Start with a $200k grant to a thousand Valadictorians and pay them to NOT go to college. That will get it started.
A PA, Dentist, engineer, accountant, those are jobs that need degrees.
Receptionist, Medical coder, bookkeeper, dry waller, dental hygienist are jobs that need at most a certificate and usually can be done with a little on the job training.
That so sad.
But I am not surprised.
I hope these companies go out of business who do things like that. Unfortunately they probably won’t and we’ll all have to get used to lower standards, like employees who can’t speak or write English properly etc. I’ve noticed the decline for years. It’s no longer even remarkable when people send out emails or documents with incorrect grammar, spelling etc.
I think that the sarcastic screed that I wrote represents the process that most modern large employer HR departments and management use. Ithink the term used is “meritocracy”.
It isn’t the degree, it’s the fact that a potential employee has a dergree, regardless of the actual subject of said degree. Even that doesn’t guarantee a foot in the door, because dagleish “aka: doug from mumbai” has a better chance of landing that job than a native does.
I learned my craft through vocational school, on the job training, and a desire to learn as much as possible about what I do, including taking classes in the latest state of the art.
That is not good enough for the 21st century HR department. They’re only interested in hiring labor at the cheapest cost. That is expected of them from their superiors.
It will cost them in the end though, when all of those people they passed up decide to go into business for themselves.
Every company has their own way of doing things, their own software and their own product.
Even if you hire someone with a Ph.D you will not be able to drop and go.
And imported people need even more on the job training because they will need cultural training as well.
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