[rant]Contact Hour Billing

[kandrathe]

As for raising the bar, well, if the average level of education goes up, and companies start demanding higher degrees, then great! A better educated population, more quality jobs, higher standards for intellectual quality. Sounds like a good idea to me. You still won't need a PhD to do plumbing, though.

>big sigh< It seems to be a wave that has swept through the US at least, that University and College is meant to be vocational. Maybe I'm an idealist, but I think is in in the interest of humanity for us all to be educated, and not just vocationally. My dream would be that all people would desire to continuously broaden their minds, and that the State would help to facilitate that. It seems that it should be in the interest of all societies to freely promote education, as it seems to obviously lead to prosperity and happiness. Not always, but mostly.

I see two contrasting forces in higher education;

A] -- Corporate focused vocational instruction with directed applied research. This solution may be best when formed as a public/private partnership between governments and companies to educate students in what the employer needs, and to direct research into solving the problems that employers have. There is not much room in this type of system for avocational activities. Studies contributing the most to the capitalists society would be in the most demand, while those that do not contribute would get little funding. This type of system leads to viewing a degree as a certificate to higher levels of employment, and salary.

B] -- Classical University Education. I see this as the tradition as brought to us from Europe, which pursues more to freely expand humanities base of knowledge and promotes true acedemic freedom. No topic is too obscure to explore, and the focus in general is to cultivate the mind, rather than to train the worker. If money would just grow on trees this type of school would be my ideal. But, retractions in government have made this option more and more untenable due to increased demands for access, and the rising costs of hiring instructors and paying for facilities. Universities are forced to cull student populations only to a slight fraction of the motivated, and cull programs to only those who attract the best donors and create high demand. Then again, I don't love high taxes either.

Either way, education is in a very sad state if its intent is to cultivate intellect and uplift the masses. As I see it, the failure in American post secondary education is convincing those who like option A] that option B] is better. I would like my world to have both Accounting and the Arts, Engineering and Philosophy, Journalism and English Literature.