Can one attain Knowledge in our current University Setting?

[speed]

I am highly dubious of our American universities ability to impart knowledge to each of their students. if one is in either business, music, art, or engineering school, one is required to take such a pathetic variety of liberal arts or even science classes in music and arts case, that one has little or any knowledge in anything but their major. Hell, even the liberal arts dont require much in the way of science and math. And if one is a undergrad, one doesnt even learn enough about the subject they majored in to be any kind of an expert. In graduate school one learns a decent amount of their specialization, but generally any practical working knowledge is not imparted, only theory, and all other disciplines are ignored.

Anyway, my point is: are American universities becoming too specialized for their own good? Frankly I dont see how anyone can get the education that one could just fifty years ago. We cant all live in a vacuum and understand only one specific subject like business--and not too well either-- and be largely ignorant of history, science, basic writing, and so on. Sure this turn towards specialization works economically, but does it work socially?

Finally, I see this as part of a increasingly disasterous problem of ignorance in America. Few, and even those i went to grad school with, can write or hold an intelligent conversation in anything unrelated to their supposed specialized field, other than gossip about their friends and their own mundane lives, etc.

Thoughts?

 

[Kenneth R.]

knowledge? absolutely. wisdom? now there's a question.

if one is the type of student to never let their thirst for discovery be ignored, they may find answers they seek at University, though those who simply sit in the required class and write down what's on the board will likely learn much less. i find (as a university student myself) that american universities are the type of institution that one must ask, or actively seek out, if one wants to learn. in a few days i'll begin to get a vantage point from a european university, when i arrive there.

the problem, like you pose it, is that gaining specific knowledge is useless, as all knowledge is useless, unless utilized for a purpose in action. the american model seems structured to provide finite paths for students to travel, giving them only the "freedom" to choose one, such as one chooses a major, a field-- without creative learning unless one demands it. the system thus creates a great deal of factory-copied minds, each with identical educations and none attempting to create new fields or ideas, since they are only learning what everyone else in that field already knows.

as for the ignorance, i cannot but agree. in one writing course, i was required to edit my fellow student's essays as they edited mine. i was horrified by their work, and its resemblance to pre-teen writing. it showed no coherent structure, apocalyptic grammar, and even worse sentence construction. further, it lacked the poetic flow of quality writing, as if each sentence were written by a different author. this, combined with my utter astonishment that in high school many of my fellow students failed outright at world and even national geography, makes me skeptical of the CONTENT of that which is taught.

 

[MasterOLightning]

The cure for overspecialization is the trimester system. I take from 45-48 classes in four years of college. My major only has 12 core classes. Therefore, I'm getting a lot of variety, and while there are requirements, I have tons of freedom in scheduling. This is at Northwestern, which is a good school with only a few idiots, so it's generally a good learning environment. The problem with our education system is the joke that is grade school, not college.

 

[Lord SteveO]

When i went to uni here in Scotland i did not have to specialize in my degree subject until my second to last year. This gave me pretty much 2 whole years each with 3 semesters to do the core courses and then anything else i wanted to fill the credits.

I got my degree in zoology, had the knowledge of the degree area and i also still learnt a lot of stuff not taught or related to my courses. I read books, internet forums, newspapers etc. So i learned a lot about the world, not just what i was taught.
Like was said already, if a person wants to go and learn, get info and knowledge on something then they will. If they just don' care and a re so lazy they do the bare minimum to get the degree then obviopusly they are not going to be as knowledgeab;e about the world etc.

Can't reallt speak for US uni's as i've never been there, but in this country i think you have a good chance to learn more than just your degree subject.

 

[speed]

knowledge? absolutely. wisdom? now there's a question.

if one is the type of student to never let their thirst for discovery be ignored, they may find answers they seek at University, though those who simply sit in the required class and write down what's on the board will likely learn much less. i find (as a university student myself) that american universities are the type of institution that one must ask, or actively seek out, if one wants to learn. in a few days i'll begin to get a vantage point from a european university, when i arrive there.

the problem, like you pose it, is that gaining specific knowledge is useless, as all knowledge is useless, unless utilized for a purpose in action. the american model seems structured to provide finite paths for students to travel, giving them only the "freedom" to choose one, such as one chooses a major, a field-- without creative learning unless one demands it. the system thus creates a great deal of factory-copied minds, each with identical educations and none attempting to create new fields or ideas, since they are only learning what everyone else in that field already knows.

as for the ignorance, i cannot but agree. in one writing course, i was required to edit my fellow student's essays as they edited mine. i was horrified by their work, and its resemblance to pre-teen writing. it showed no coherent structure, apocalyptic grammar, and even worse sentence construction. further, it lacked the poetic flow of quality writing, as if each sentence were written by a different author. this, combined with my utter astonishment that in high school many of my fellow students failed outright at world and even national geography, makes me skeptical of the CONTENT of that which is taught.

Good point. I logically make an inference that Knowledge ( and in more than just one subject)=wisdom=virtue. And I know this is far from a totally sound way of thinking of all three.

 

[infoterror]

Knowledge of what? Drugs, fellatio, evasion? The system specializes in such things.

:Spin:

 

[ThePhilosopher]

I wholeheartedly agree about the lack of writing skills. I'm a freshman in college and I'm in a class called "Expository Writing". Part of the class involves "peer editing", where we exchange rough drafts with another student and edit (not so much "proofread") the work. In a nutshell, their grammar and punctuation was horrible, the sentences had some whacky structure, they didn't know how to use paragraphs (one paragraph took up a page and a half in one of them), their work ultimately proved or showed absolutely nothing, and they did a very poor job of incorporating sources to prove their theses. Speaking of thesis statements, one person's was actually in the form of a QUESTION. At this point, I couldn't help but become a little condescending in the written report I was going to give back to him. It's called a thesis STATEMENT for a reason, as in it ends in a period and not in a question mark. To be honest, I'm no award-winning writer myself, but these people have NO idea how to conclude or show anything significant in their original writing. The thing is that I find the lack of sentence structure and inability to draw decent conclusions to be far more alarming than the lack of punctuation, which is also irritating but not quite as crucial.

With all that said, I think my college (Rutgers) does a good job of providing a good amount of overall knowledge and is not all that specialized. The graduation requirements and major/minor requirements put together still leave at least 30-40 credits (10-14 classes) that need to be filled in by other electives most of the time. I find this to generally be a good balance, and I firmly believe that knowledge in American universities (and the rest of the world) shouldn't be so specialized.

 

[NeverIsForever]

I think it's possible to attain knowledge in the current university system. But I think you have to want it, and actively seek it out.

I agree, the writing skills of today's students are deplorable. In my opinion, this is at least partly due to the fact that a lot of kids are too busy watching TV and playing video games, so they don't read much anymore, and thus don't see proper grammar and sentence structure in use.