Although you might have a point with regards to vocational training, there is basically no research coming out of places like lambda school and the recurse center (please correct me if I am wrong). Things will change only when researchers can find stable (and reliable) sources of funding outside the traditional sphere of institutions like universities.
I'm pretty critical of academia, but even without knowing what lambdaschool.com is I am pretty certain it can't, or should not compete with academia. Vocational training and academic training are very different things. (And both are useful in their own right.) Indeed, a lot of problems in academia come from universities trying to pretend they are vocational schools...
>Indeed, a lot of problems in academia come from universities trying to pretend they are vocational schools...
I think I've seen this sort of sentiment repeated countless times for a number of years, but I strongly suspect it's quite ahistorical and incorrect.
I'm sure there is some diversity in how public university systems developed in various places, but the state university (you know, not Harvard or something) I went to evolved from a teachers college. It was educating people for careers before it tried to follow a curriculum like liberal arts colleges.
Zooming out, wasn't there a period of time when there was a whole movement to repurpose higher education from educating a small elite in Latin, Greek, etc. to essentially vocational education? Didn't this go hand in hand with the upheaval of the industrial revolution, and the idea that the masses should be educated?
When people sneer at universities being places to educate people in useful skills, it bewilders me because it seems like they are just wiping away the last couple centuries in favor of a vague desire to return to an era that simply didn't educate the average person.
I just have had this sense of weirdness for years that never goes away, whenever people matter-of-factly complain about universities being focused on practical subjects as though it were a recent degeneration of higher education. It was always (for the hoi polloi) this way! It was meant to be this way, going back 160 years!
moab|4 years ago
4ad|4 years ago
perl4ever|4 years ago
I think I've seen this sort of sentiment repeated countless times for a number of years, but I strongly suspect it's quite ahistorical and incorrect.
I'm sure there is some diversity in how public university systems developed in various places, but the state university (you know, not Harvard or something) I went to evolved from a teachers college. It was educating people for careers before it tried to follow a curriculum like liberal arts colleges.
Zooming out, wasn't there a period of time when there was a whole movement to repurpose higher education from educating a small elite in Latin, Greek, etc. to essentially vocational education? Didn't this go hand in hand with the upheaval of the industrial revolution, and the idea that the masses should be educated?
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land-grant_university
When people sneer at universities being places to educate people in useful skills, it bewilders me because it seems like they are just wiping away the last couple centuries in favor of a vague desire to return to an era that simply didn't educate the average person.
I just have had this sense of weirdness for years that never goes away, whenever people matter-of-factly complain about universities being focused on practical subjects as though it were a recent degeneration of higher education. It was always (for the hoi polloi) this way! It was meant to be this way, going back 160 years!
the_only_law|4 years ago