NYCPHP Meetup

[David Krings]

Christopher R. Merlo wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 5:02 PM, David Krings <ramons at gmx.net 
> <mailto:ramons at gmx.net>> wrote:
> 
>     A university is supposed to train interested candidates in a field
>     of choice with the goal to make them subject matter experts in that
>     field.
> 
> 
> That's actually not true, and your apparent belief in this untruth is 
> probably what has led to your seemingly very strongly felt distaste for 
> university education.

Huh? I got two university degrees and did so voluntarily. So what you say is 
clearly not the case. My point is that someone who for example takes a BSEE 
program at Alfred State College is required to have 132 credits for 
graduation. From those 132 credits 60 credit hours are for liberal arts 
classes and other sciences that are non-major. Not all of those may be totally 
off topic, but I don't get why a BSEE student has to take american history 
again or take an arts course (or even more than just one). The 13 years K-12 
ought to have covered that. I also think that a high school graduate should be 
capable of properly expressing thoughts in speech and writing and not needing 
yet another round of English courses. I got my BSEE degree at a non-US 
university in a seven semester program with a total of 154 credits and as 
mentioned before only 3 courses were not that much related to engineering.

> The purpose of a college or university is to provide the student with an 
> education, so that the student may go on to contribute back to society.  

Ah, c'mon! Reading books to children or planting trees or donating blood or 
driving people to their doctor's appointments - that is giving back to 
society. Getting a university degree is for the sake of getting a better job 
with better pay and ideally get some more exposure to a subject that one 
likes. How does getting a degree in finance and becoming a greedy investment 
banker give back to society? I can see getting a degree in social work being 
something that gives back to society. Or do you mean that graduates get better 
paying jobs and thus pay more taxes and that helps funding government programs?


I agree with the rest that you wrote and I don't think it collides with what I 
wrote earlier. My point is that compared to other countries US universities 
focus way too much on a broad education rather than on transferring 
specialized skills and knowledge of a specific subject. And I think that is 
why foreign workers especially in IT have an advantage. I'm not saying that an 
extra writing course is useless or that art history is utterly unimportant, 
but I think that is something that shouldn't be part of a university program.

David