The core problem of ensuring that university students get the general employability skills they want and need to succeed in the labour market isn’t that universities think it’s the wrong thing to do. Rather, the problem is that they think it’s flat-out impossible.
To be clear, this isn’t because they think that competencies acquired in general arts and sciences are antithetical to those in demand in the labour market (in fact they seem to believe the opposite). Rather it is because they think that curricula design makes it impossible to deliberately inculcate a specific set of skills. And no one, reasonably enough, wants to be held to account for something they don’t think they can achieve.
In The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University (Issues of Our Time), Louis Menand noted that there are two basic models of general education. In a “core” model, the faculty work out a set of things that educated people “ought to know,” and then design and deliver courses to make sure students know these before graduation. This is basically the approach taken by Harvard and Columbia – it’s also what you tend to see in most of the rest of the world outside North America as well. In a “distribution” model – the one used by every institution in Canada – one is supposed to swim freely in the waters of liberal education, picking and choosing courses across a wide variety of areas subject only to requirements to ensure a certain breadth of selection.
Most schools use the “distribution” model because a) it ducks the politically difficult question of what students have to know and b) it allows faculty – particularly in the humanities – to teach more or less whatever they want. But, for obvious reasons, it make it unbelievably difficult to talk about “outcomes.” If a student can chose any 40 courses out of – say – 400 available in a social science program, that makes for a little under 2*1054 possible combinations. With all those variations, ensuring measurable outcomes is like trying to guarantee a calorie-per-meal limit at an all-you-can-eat buffet.
Here’s a crazy idea: why not shift to more of a “core” model? More required courses and fewer electives would make it easier to ensure that individual courses build towards coherent program outcomes – including those that matter for employability. It’s hardly unprecedented – universities in fact looked like this before the 60s (and, indeed, most polytechnic programs are like this already). Added bonuses: it would also make the whole shift to a “learning outcomes” focus that much easier. And it’s probably cheaper.
It wouldn’t happen without some hard work and thoughtful program design, of course. But given the potential reward of more consistent and valuable outcomes, shouldn’t more schools be giving it a try?
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I don’t think the distinction between core versus distributive curriculum is the best way to frame the discussion. A more productive view might start with an articulation of the desired capabilities, then ask how our institutions could support students in developing/demonstrating/documenting those capabilities, and *lastly* ask what program of courses – existing or new – or other learning experiences would provide the needed opportunities and structures.
There is a good articulation of the desired capabilities in the” Meaning and Relevance of Liberal Education” section of the recent book Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education, which augments the usual elements (Analytical Thinkng, Multiple Framings of Knowledge, and Reflective Exploration of Meaning) with the important addition of Practical Reasoning – “drawing on knowledge and skills to engage professional judgment for action in the world”.
Carl Bereiter raises similar issues in his book Education and Mind in the Knowledge Age, hihglighting “Knowing as a verb rather than a noun”. It seems to me that is what’s missing from efforts to structure General/Liberal Education as a curriculum of topic courses rather than as a network of experiential learning pathways.
While, temperamentally at least, I find myself agreeing with your comments, it occurs to me that you (or we) are ignoring the tidal surge toward more interdisciplinary study in virtually every program area in North America’s universities. And, more interdisciplinary study suggests the need for more flexibility in building individual programs, not less. I look forward to reading your polemic outlining how interdisciplinary study is actually detrimental to the employment options for today’s student, because it seems like a pretty tough argument to construct.
Hi Peter.
Depends on whether or not you think interdisciplinarity depends on flexibility. I just sat on a curriculum committee for a BA in interdisciplinary studies in Seneca that was quite restrictive. Which at a certain level makes sense – interdisciplinarity doesn’t mean much if you don’t actually grasp the disciplines themselves. So you have to spend a lot of time drilling on the fundamentals in multiple disciplines before you can get to true interdisciplinarity.
I have a foot in humanities teaching and in program development and approach any model that suggests “most universities looked like this in the 1960s” with great trepidation. Social and educational changes since the 1960s have moved the academy away from a Dead White European Male curriculum founded upon Great Books for a reason, namely that the authority to determine a field of knowledge should not rest centrally, either within a culture or within an institution. I sympathize with the difficulties of assuring student competence in a distribution model and am, indeed, involved in creating a core program at my institution–but restricting what we think of as central or foundational knowledge is problematic at best.