Educational Myopia

"What are you going to do with your degree?"

This is an astonishingly common question asked of people engaged in university education.  I will leave aside the matter that such a question seems to imply that a degree is equivalent to some sort of tool, a hammer or a wrench or the like.  But the question does imply a belief in the mind of the questioners, that all university education ought to represent the educational equivalent of direct career training. 

Of course, there are some university programs that do function in this way, medicine leaps to mind, and engineering, as do more-recently created programs related to the business field. 

But such direct career purposes are not the roots of university education in its classic form, unless one assumes that most original undergraduate education was part of an apprenticeship for a career in academia itself.

Our son graduated this spring from an undergraduate program in human kinetics.  When first registering at university, he had not established any kind of clear learning focus, so he started out in general arts.  After two years of study, he found an interest in human kinetics and moved to that program.  He was, however, constantly bombarded with the question above.  His responses were always vague.

In his final term of study, he took on a part-time, minimum-wage job in the shipping and receiving department of a large retail chain.  As he graduated and summer approached, a manager approached him to ask if he would be interested in entering a short training experience aimed at being an appliance salesperson.  After some consideration, he decided to go ahead with this plan, and in the middle of this month will assume a full-time position as part of the retailer's appliance sales staff.

Many of his student colleagues who graduated at the same time, and some who graduated earlier (his studies took an extra year due to the change in programs of study) remain unemployed.  Interestingly, these same former student colleagues are somewhat dismissive of his current occupation, implying that he has 'wasted' his university education.  Indeed, when we proudly tell family and friends about our son's current employment, generally the reaction also seems to suggest that this must be somewhat disappointing after five years of university education.  For us, quite the contrary.

First, in the employment world of today (and possibly even of yesterday), it is unlikely that any particular work situation will necessarily represent a particular restrictive career path.  Data supports the notion that people will have many major changes in employment over their lifetime.

Secondly, we never assumed that the primary reason he was attending university (regardless of the program in which he ended up), was instrumental training for a particular entry-level job.  We did have a sense that the general learning related to becoming university educated would end up serving him well as he tried to find a future place in the world of full adulthood.

Let me give some examples of how I think this worked:

- His involvement in drama in high school was never intended to ensure that he could pursue a career as professional actor (although this was not excluded); it did, however, give him a boost in self confidence, and the ability to work with others, and to gain comfort in standing out in front of others.

- His involvement in soccer helped to develop his team skills, and ensured that his lifestyle included physical activity.  It also helped build self confidence (albeit including some experiences with bullying) and evolve some leadership skills

- His general experience as a university student helped him to break out of being a dependent child to an independent adult.  He had to learn to assume personal responsibility, to meet deadlines, to organize for success, to deal with failure, and on and on and on.  Oh, yes, he also had to meet the prescribed formal learning outcomes as well.

- As an arts student, he had to accomplish the foregoing, as well as build his capacity to write coherently; he had to build his capacity think in some orderly fashion; he had to enhance his capacity to be mindful and sometimes to think in a constructively critical fashion.

- As a human kinetics student, he had to learn to organize and make presentations; he had to work cooperatively with other students in prescribed activities; he learned about important life skills such as promotion of healthy, active living  and nutrition-related topics.

- And as an emerging adult, he had to learn to manage his finances and to do his grocery shopping, to make his own meals, and to negotiate his way through living in shared accommodation, finding out how to register for utilities, and negotiate rental arrangements for accommodation.

Now he is gainfully employed and finding out what it takes to get along as a responsible adult and member of society.

I think his university education has served him very well thus far, even though some short-sighted folks may not believe that he is actually 'using' his degree.