Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!udel!rochester!rit!mjl
From: mjl@cs.rit.edu
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Education
Message-ID: <1449@cs.rit.edu>
Date: 20 Dec 89 22:31:49 GMT
References: <1989Dec18.042005.19231@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu> <7478@hubcap.clemson.edu>
Sender: news@cs.rit.edu
Reply-To: mjl@prague.UUCP (Michael Lutz)
Organization: Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY
Lines: 50

In article <7478@hubcap.clemson.edu> billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu writes:
>   Hey, this may come as a surprise, but 99% or more of the students
>   who resent being part of a captive audience would like nothing better
>   than an opportunity to participate in an efficient system by which
>   they could become self-supporting as quickly as possible.  If you
>   offer these people the opportunity to ditch all the bullshit and
>   get onto the fast track to financial achievement, they'd gladly
>   load up on student loans and pay back ALL the costs, plus interest.   
>    
>   It absolutely astounds me that the educational system takes people
>   who are living in the depths of poverty in the filthiest of ghettoes
>   and insists that they study wars of previous centuries, Shakespeare,
>   etc.!!!  What these people need is intensive economic training so they
>   can make better lives for themselves, not enough bullshit to convince
>   them that they are completely wasting their time inside that classroom. 

This takes the cake.  I teach at one of the most stridently career
oriented institutions in the land.  RIT unabashedly proclaims that its
primary mission is the preparation of graduates for careers in a
variety of professions from engineering and computer science to graphic
arts and photography.  Yet the vast majority of my faculty colleagues
would recoil in horror at the thought of providing the kind of
"education" Bill Wolfe advocates.

It's all summed up in RIT's motto: "To earn a living and live a life."
Both of these aspects are crucial our view of effective undergraduate
education.  In particular, career oriented schools have an obligation
to expose their students to a wider spectrum of ideas than can be found
in a single professional discipline.  Curricula designed with mere
utilitarian concerns risk turning a college into a glorified trade
school.  Not that there is anything inherently wrong with trade
schools, but they make no pretense of educating their graduates: they
provide specific, narrowly focused training.

Undergraduate institutions are held to a higher standard, that of
preparing young people for a life in which a career is but one
component, albeit an important one.  Those who wish to partake of the
benefits accruing to a bachelors degree must be willing to meet the
demands such degrees impose.  If at times this means taking an
"irrelevant" course or two, that's part of the price one pays to be
educated instead of trained.  (And it's amazing how often these
"irrelevant" courses come to be viewed as essential to a well-rounded
life).

Mike Lutz
Rochester Institute of Technology
mjl@cs.rit.edu
Mike Lutz	Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester NY
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