For those that have not watched the terrific documentary The Ivory Tower I urge you to do so. It presents an important and compelling analysis of the rising costs of US based college education as a response to student debt which now exceeds $1 trillion. With many graduates unable to secure employment even with Masters degrees the value of their education is under increasingly intense scrutiny. The film makes the case that incredible levels of investment in campus facilities has become the focus in order to attract out of state students with lowered academic expectations a common outcome. In extreme cases actual time spent studying is reported as less than one hour per day by some students.
Interestingly, for this viewer at least, was the implicit assumption that the role of education is to deliver work-ready individuals able to enter the world of business seamlessly. The suggestion that a college education exists to teach young people how to think – through a liberal arts perspective – was a point made by a few academics but without exploration or challenge. The parents, of course, had the strongest need for a tangible return on their investment measured as employability whereas the students, unsurprisingly, desire a life experience. I have sympathy for both. The parents have a right to expect $160k to mean more than an unbroken string of parties and access to incredible amenities, whilst young people have a right to behave as young people will in such circumstances. None of which addresses the question of what an education should mean in a world where businesses struggle to attract and retain talent.
As a Scot who lives in Glasgow I wish to tread lightly here. In my own city there are four fantastic universities and the oldest, where I teach MBA and MSc students, has a 500 year history – one of the ‘ancient’ universities in the UK – is ranked within the top 100 in the world and has an excellent research reputation. It is also free. From that vantage point arguments over the content of education can seem (if you’ll pardon the pun) academic. Yet whether the cost of university education is met by the taxpayer or privately by individuals the issue is of course pertinent to all. No one wishes to dedicate four years of their life to learning only to find that it has little sustainable value.
My own view accords with Sir Ken Robinson who brilliantly demonstrates why our obsession with a Greek model and system built for the industrial revolution are out of step with a modern world. The doctrine of critical analysis and reliance on memory, which we know from recent research to be generally diabolical, seems clumsy and archaic to me. Yet, as an academic I am drawn to research and the development of theory, a pivotal aspect of which is the need to critically appraise new data and findings in the context of what is already known about phenomena. And it is through experimentation and research that we make new discoveries which shape how we live and our understanding of the world around us. There is also a paradox at the heart of the debate surrounding college education in the US. The focus of institutions on research at the expense of teaching may negatively impact student experience and thus devalue an education which is increasingly expensive, yet at the level of corporate education it is research and scholars whom organisations turn to for guidance and support. The need for understanding, to learn from past experience in an effort to shape a response to an uncertain future, is frequently reliant on the work of academics. It is theory which helps business to understand itself.
What is probable is that the system of education which prevails is unsustainable. Just as parents and students balk at the cost of their degrees in the US universities in the rest of the UK have begun charging fees. Scotland is holding out but is increasingly isolated in its belief that university education is a right. I am ever hopeful that the nation which sparked the Enlightenment can continue its tradition. Which raises an important question. Should the tradition demand veneration of a system or should it instead demand that the system be transformed, that the spirit of the enlightenment which required new paradigms of learning be best invoked by universities who seek new ways of learning? Where measurement of narrow criterion in stratified disciplines in formal exams is rejected for a more fluent, creative and productive education experience. One that values imagination and enacted value creation over memory, where theory is not an end in itself but the beginning of something powerfully applicable. In every field we need the legacy of the scholars and theoreticians whose shoulders we stand on. But perhaps it is time to find ways for students to become the pioneers of their own learning experiences, the creators of knowledge rather than the vessels we attempt to fill with our circumscribed materials. Collaboration. That could be the key.
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