Here at HESA towers, we’ve been doing some work on how students make decisions about choosing a university (if you’re interested: the Student Decisions Project was a multi-wave, qualitative, year-long longitudinal study that tracked several hundred Grade 12 students as they went through the PSE research, application, and enrolment process. We also took a more targeted qualitative look, specifically at Arts, with the national Prospective Arts Students Survey). We’ve been trying to do the same for colleges, but it’s a much trickier demographic to survey.
In both studies, one of the questions we asked is what students really want from their education.
Now at one level, this question is kind of trite. We know from 15 years of surveys from the Canadian Undergraduate Survey Consortium that students go to university: i) to get better jobs; ii) because they like learning about a particular field; and also, iii) to make friends, and enjoy the “university experience”.
Where it gets a little trickier, however, is when you break this down by particular fields of study. With most faculties, there tends to be a positive reason to attend. However, when it comes to Arts, enrolment is often seen as a fall-back option – it’s something you do if you don’t have concrete goals, or if you can’t do anything else. Now, Arts faculties tend to take the positive here, and spin this as students wanting to “find themselves”. But in deploying this bit of spin, Arts faculties often end up heading in the wrong direction.
One of the problems here is that the notion of students “finding themselves” (not a term students themselves use) is not as straightforward as many think. Broadly, there are three possible definitions. The first situates “finding yourself” in academic terms: by exploring a lot of different academic options, a student finds something that interests her/him, and becomes academically engaged. This is one of the reasons that Arts faculties are built around a smorgasbord model, which lets students “taste” as many things as possible, and hence “discover” themselves.
But that’s not the only possible definition of “finding oneself”. There is another option, in which students essentially view PSE as a cooling out period where they can “find” what they want to do, in a vocational sense. Yes, they are taking courses, but since they recognize that Arts courses don’t lead directly to employment, they are more or less marking time while they discover how to make their way in the employment world, and think about how and where they want to live. Then there is a third, slightly different take, in which students view “finding themselves” as the process by which they acquire transversal skills, and the skills of personal effectiveness needed to be successful adults. School is something they do while they are learning these skills, often for little reason other than that going to school is something they have always done, and in many cases are expected to do.
Though all of these interpretations of “finding yourself” have some currency among students, it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise to learn that the one about “finding yourself” being a voyage of academic discovery is, in fact, the least frequently mentioned by incoming students. Now, maybe they come around to this view later on, but it is not high on the list of reasons they attend in the first place. To the extent that they have specific academic interests as a reason for enrolling in Arts, they tend to be just that: specific – they want to study Drama, or History, or whatever.
Which raises two questions: if this is true, what’s the benefit of Arts faculties maintaining such a wide breadth of requirements? And second, why aren’t Arts faculties explicitly building-in more transversal skills elements into their programs? Presumably, there would be a significant advantage in terms of recruitment for doing so. Someone should give it a whirl.
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You note that “finding themselves” is a not an expression Arts students use. I believe that — not least because I can’t recall hearing anyone at all use that expression in relation to why students study Arts. (Nor, frankly, in relation to anything else since about 1988.)
The column is predicated, however, on the claim that “Arts faculties tend to… spin this as students wanting to ‘find themselves.'” And moreover that Arts faculties specifically mean something about “a voyage of academic discovery” when they use this spin — and that they do *not* particularly mean anything like students’ “think[ing] about how and where they want to live”, or finding out what they’re good at, or finding out what the big deal about university really is, or, heck, anything else at all.
There is no reason to suppose any of that is true, though. At least, I never personally encountered the “spin” that you assert is common (which Faculties of Arts are apparently hiding from Google with considerable efficacy too); and I find it unclear how, in the rare cases such spin might be used, one could determine that it was meant in the very precise (mistaken, begging to be corrected) way you describe. Meanwhile, the interpretations that you sketch as being more reasonable are, in my experience, time-worn and bog-standard coffee talk about student motivations among Arts admin and profs.
As to the question “why aren’t Arts faculties explicitly building-in more transversal skills elements into their programs?” Well, more than what? Someone casually reading the piece might be unaware that the notion of “transversal skills” is protean and ill-defined even by the exuberant standards of educational buzzword neologisms. It would be useful to specify some definition or other, sharpen it to the point that one can have a somewhat meaningful discussion, and *then* ask — in some empirically informed way — just how much Arts faculties are now doing, and how much they ought to be doing, to focus on whatever skills are meant.
As this stands, the critique seems directed at a non-existent target and the positive proposal is notably short of content.
Seems to me that “spin” (as you put it) is pretty deeply embedded in the thinking that underlies most Arts curricula (in particular the various “breadth” requirements).
No, “spin” is how *you* put it. Twice, right? I quoted the passage in which you wrote it.
The entry hinges on a very specific understanding of the particular phrase “finding [x]self,” which you repeatedly define as “spin” that Arts faculties “tend to” deploy, and which you use in quotation marks seven times, carefully combing it for ambiguities.
It’s hard to see what remains of the piece if the real message is that Arts faculties don’t *actually* say the thing you dissect at length, but do say other (unspecified) things that you think kind of mean the same. How would you even get to the point of attributing a very specific *wrong* interpretation of “finding yourself” to these Artsies, if it’s all just an interpretation you’re building out of a bunch of different language they actually use?
But hey — yesterday’s was better; I bet tomorrow’s will be too.
Did I? My bad. Didn’t remember using that term.
Also, a colleague notes that the Waterloo Arts viewbook opens with the words “Discover a place that fosters your personal growth. This is a time to explore subjects you care about”. So maybe not *that* farfetched a notion?
I don’t see the reading of those remarks that is inconsistent with, say, “PSE as a cooling out period where they can “find” what they want to do, in a vocational sense… while they discover how to make their way in the employment world, and think about how and where they want to live.” Sounds to me like an instance of personal growth and studying what you care about (for whatever reason you might care about it).
Is it “farfetched” to impose a reading on those Viewbook remarks that somehow renders them out of touch with what students want from Arts? I’m not sure what farfetched has to do with it. I’m more concerned with its being *unwarranted*, and it certainly appears to be that.
It’s possible I have overgeneralized from some of my time working in small liberal arts colleges.
I think astute employers intuitively recognize the criticality of those transversal skills and that they are obtained just as much (if not more) outside the classroom as inside. Whether it be student leadership, university committees, clubs, or other ventures, the university environment provides an excellent incubator for building the soft skills needed in most every vocation, while at the same time facilitating discovery of a student’s aptitudes and passions.
I agree completely – I’m not suggesting it doesn’t. But I’m not sure that’s a great defence of the university. if most learning gains result from keeping bright 18-22 penned up with one another for a few years and letting them work stuff out on their own, surely there are cheaper ways of doing it than the current system. The question is: what does curriculum *add* to that process?
A fair and worthy question, to be sure.
Agree, I really think that Arts/Social Science programs need to be less defensive about the changing world around us. They talk about ‘critical thinking’ but mostly just mean inculcating conventional disciplinary norms that are not that helpful in training students to be analytical and logical, i.e. able to discern b.s. when they read or see it.
Ina similar vein some kind of quantitative requirement should be mandatory for ALL university students, even if at a basic level: probability, etc. These skills are critical for not being snowed under in real life, even if you are not going to be a mathematician or computer scientist. Every student should be learning about the issues that people like Daniel Hahnemann and Nicholas Taleb are talking about.
Queen’s offers certificates or minors to Arts students in e.g. business fundamentals. The idea is not to create mini versions of Donald but to give them tools to deal with what’s out there in the world as it is.
Dear Sean,
I am writing including “discerning BS” as a learning outcome on my next course syllabus.
“Discerning BS” is, I am pretty sure, the main learning outcome I had from my degree in history.