About a month ago, I wrote about whether institutions would adjust their program mix if it would help improve economic growth. Nearly everyone that wrote me implicitly assumed that the “right” mix for economic growth implied a switch to a more STEM-heavy system, before going on to say something like “but what about the humanities?” I found this kind of amusing, because I actually don’t automatically assume that STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) degrees are where it’s at in terms of growth, and there are a couple of quite high-powered papers out that support this view.
The first, Revisiting the STEM Workforce, comes from the National Science Board in the US. This publication makes a couple of sensible points, the most important being that STEM skills and STEM degrees are not the same thing. Lots of STEM graduates end up in non-STEM employment; conversely, many STEM-field jobs are held by people who are not themselves STEM graduates (Steve Jobs, famously, went to Reed College and was self-taught as far as computers went). Basically, the link between higher education credentials and labour market skills is nowhere near as tight as people tend to assume.
The second new STEM report, from the Canadian Council of Academies, makes an even more important point: namely, that STEM skills are a necessary condition for innovation, but not a sufficient one. The panel that wrote the report (led by former Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge) did not go quite as far as Don Tapscott did in his plea to replace a focus on STEM degrees with a focus on STEAM degrees (i.e. STEM + Arts). They did, however, point to a number of other types of skills, such as communication, team work, leadership, creativity, and adaptability, which they felt were at least as important as narrow STEM skills. The panel also made the point that the best way to meet future human resource challenges is to focus more broadly on skill acquisition from pre-primary to higher education, across a range of subjects – because, frankly, you never know what kind of labour market you’re going to need.
Both reports say we need to get over our obsession with STEM, a conclusion that typically brings cheers from the humanities’ defenders. But be careful here: even if you buy the “more STEAM” conclusion, it says nothing about the number of Arts degrees that should be produced. Companies are not dying to hire more Arts grads so they can add that little something of creativity and communication to existing teams of STEM workers. What they are looking for are individuals who can integrate all of those skills. It’s a call for more crossover degrees involving both Arts and STEM. It’s a call to get beyond C.P. Snow’s Two Cultures.
The real problem is that universities genuinely do not know how to deliver programs like this. Fundamentally, they are designed to focus on degrees rather than skills. Sure, programs can cross departmental lines; however, programs that cross faculty lines are the red-headed step-children of higher education. As a result, “real” programs – read: prestigious programs – more or less follow disciplinary lines. Within universities, faculties count success by how many students are “theirs”, but cross-faculty programs exist in a kind of no-man’s-land: they simultaneously belong to everyone and no one. With no incentives, there’s simply no pressure from below – that is, from faculty – to embark on the arduous journey of creating a curriculum, and working it through the academic approval process. In other words, STEAM only works for Arts at a resource level (and hence a political level) if it means more Arts degrees; if not, then forget it.
It would all be so much easier if institutions were built around what we wanted students to learn; instead, they are organized by academic disciplines that are necessary guardians of research quality, but in many respects actively hinder the development of balanced graduates who can succeed in work and society. Finding ways to mitigate this problem is one of the most important questions facing higher education, but we can’t seem to talk about it openly. That’s a problem that needs solving.
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Is it possible that the “cross-faculty” issue is a red-headed herring? The reason I ask is that when I went to Trent, I was in what is now the Business Admin program. But, most of our courses were cross-listed. So, in my fourth year, I took one politics courses, two economics courses, and two business courses. Presumably the business faculty got some cash for my being in their program and taking their courses, yet I assume politics and economics got some too since I was taking their courses. All five were counted towards my degree, and I don’t mean just as electives, they were cross-listed with the business program.
Would such a simple change — funding of faculties by course enrolment rather than program — help to eliminate the red-headed stepchildren in STEM?
What it sounds like you’re advocating is a variation of what Quest University has, with what would derisively be called a generalist approach but would be generously called broad-spectrum. The only way I can see students getting the fully blended STEAM you describe through the “traditional” university model is doing two degrees. e.g Bachelor in Engineering, MBA. But even here there’s a narrow focus on those that are similar enough to be prerequisites for each other (I don’t think many students would be able to do their undergrad in sociology and then a graduate degree in mathematics).
I think there’s a case for a culture shift towards looking more at the course mix a student took rather than their credential at the end. As you say, the title doesn’t really mean much, but if employers more readily asked for course breakdowns on applications or universities broadened their elective offerings and helped students actually achieve in them rather than treat them as burners or pass/fails, we might see a labour market where the sum of one’s training is what matters. I think many students have broader skills/capabilites than their transcripts would suggest.
There is a good body of research (i.e., Centre for Business Innovation) that signal that Canadian companies are less structured in their management of innovation than companies in other countries. Put this together with the generally lower levels of education in the leadership of Canadian companies and we can start to see that the key issue in the innovation performance of Canadian companies is linked to the innovation competence of their leadership. For me the question for universities and colleges is: are students being trained with the skills and perspectives needed to help their future employers succeed with a value-adding business (i.e., innovation) strategy, particularly as they rise beyond entry-level positions.
Thanks for the find Alex, the Canadian Council of Academies STEM report is a great read.
re: your commentary: it may be true in general that universities are focused on degrees than skills (maybe because degree progression and completion is easier to measure than skill development) but there are exceptions (and a growing list of exceptions), many of these can be found in undergraduate Engineering programs:
Engineering programs graduate many students who integrate “STEM Skills”, with creativity and communication skills, and some of these programs have systems in place to develop these skills (i.e. its not all a matter of Engineering students attracting naturally talented students) : Design (i.e. applied creativity ) courses and projects that develop creativity; interview, resume and presentational workshops that developing communication skills, etc. The most “Prestigious” engineering programs are probably the most systematic:
>Engineering Science (at U of T): Praxis I and II which form the distinctive foundation for U of T Engineering Science is by definition and design a skill development platform (developing engineering, design and communication skills).
>Similarly the foundational project course that “launches” UBC Engineering Physics is designed as a skil/tool development platform (based on my conversations with Eng Phys project course team members, the course develop a diversity of skills: t project management, leadership, communication skills, design skills)
Judging by the diversity and quality of co-op placements, internships and employment (and grad school outcomes) for U of T Eng Science and UBC Eng Phys students, these programs do a good job of developing “teamwork, adaptability, leadership and communication skills” (Explore the LinkedIn networks of these students and you will be amazed at the quality and diversity of their networks).
My understanding/assumption is that Canadian employers have decided that Engineering students are the most skilled (i’d be thrilled to see evidence disproving this hypothesis) undergraduates – there are more co-op/internships for Engineering students than any other undergraduate discipline (in absolute numbers), and Engineering graduates command the highest starting salaries and attract the interest of the greatest diversity of employers (from top-shelf consulting firms, to large utilities, to the military, start-up companies etc…).
I know that the point of your post is that universities are not well equipped/oriented to develop multi-disciplary.multi-skilled programs, I just want to put out there (and I know its not a blinding insight) that many Engineering programs are managing to develop and graduate students that are multi-skilled.
Philip Varghese
This message is precisely the reason Quest University Canada was founded — to focus on students rather than on faculty, and to “focus more broadly on skills acquisition…across a broad range of subjects” rather than on discipline-based degrees. Quest has no departments and assigns faculty offices by lottery so that a mathematician sits next to a musician, a political scientist, a poet, and a physicist. We have a two-year required Foundation program in which all students take courses in mathematics, sciences, social sciences, humanities, arts, and language. The focus throughout is not on content (any bit of information one needs is two taps away on a smart phone) but on effective communication, constant collaboration, and the acquisition of a variety of modes of thought with which students can address the complex and ever-changing challenges they will face upon graduation. Our collaborative, immersive, student-centered approach is the reason we have been ranked number one in Canada for five years in a row in the National Survey of Student Engagement, and why our graduates thrive in leading graduate and professional programs around the world and in jobs ranging from cybersecurity to National Parks management, and from K-12 education to environmental engineering.
This sounds like the need for a US-style liberal arts college with selective intake (e.g., Reed College).
To belabor a point others have made, there are two problems: incentives for cross-faculty programs; and incentives for teaching and assessing meaningful skills.
You are correct about the problem of cross-faculty programs having problems receiving faculty buy-in and surviving. However, it’s not because faculty members are opposed to them. It is due to the nature of the incentive system. Depending on one’s Dean (or even one’s Chair, in departments with poor collegiality), participating in such cross-faculty programs may harm one’s chances of tenure and promotion. Furthermore, beyond the idiosyncrasies of Deans and Chairs, (my anecdotal observation at one university in Ontario is that) cross-faculty programs require administrative champions to support them. Once those champions leave, those programs might be at a disadvantage relative to those housed entirely within one Faculty.
A focus on skills is different animal. While the current system doesn’t condemn faculty for the deliberate inculcation or formation of student (discipline-specific or general) skills, neither does it condone them as side from a smattering of teaching awards. Fostering skills in writing, editing, critical thinking, presentation, analytical thinking, and so on, regardless of the discipline, often requires lots of marking, as well as well-designed feedback and iterative assessment mechanisms. Those take time, and get in the way of other faculty responsibilities. Whether those responsibilities should be given less weight or not is also a question of incentives. But rarely do administrators care if we can say “70% of my students can write clearly and think analytically when before only 20% could do either,” because you can’t fit that into a dashboard or other metric as easily as a paper I published in a peer-review journal. It is also costly in terms of time and resources, and truth be told, the MTCU and administrators want us to push bodies through the sausage factory as fast and efficiently as possible.
While the MTCU’s and other parties’ interest in Degree Level Expectations (DLEs) is the beginning of such a shift, my anecdotal observations unfortunately lead me to believe that it will probably be a few decades before we have meaningful measurements of this kind of output (i.e., X% of students had skill Y before entering university, and upon graduation Z% do. This was a AA% increase in meeting the minimum threshold of mastery…). And it is worth noting that many people who champion DLEs are also singing from the same hymnbook that states that we should meet out students exactly where they are at (instead of channelling them into similar tranches or cohorts in need of the same kind of remediation).