European universities fear "Americanization"

[Deja Q]

http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/11/20/euro.learning.pains.ap/index.html


Resistance remains fierce, driven by fears of the "Americanization" -- or commercialization -- of higher education.

But economic realities are overpowering those who maintain that universities should impart universal knowledge, not pave the way to a job. Too many European graduates are getting welfare checks instead of paychecks.

Europe's universities don't provide the skills and research needed to help the continent prosper and compete with rapidly growing economies in Asia and elsewhere, according to international rankings, school presidents, students and European Union officials.
(snip)

Still, that may not be enough. The OECD says China and India are adapting faster than the United States and the EU and are producing more high-skilled workers for 21st century needs.
(snip)

Well, that explains the H1B situation? :shrug:

Students receive little guidance. European college dropout rates average 40 percent. One survey found that more than a third of adults in the EU cannot perform basic computer tasks such as using a mouse to access an Internet site or working with a word-processing program.
(snip)

Ouch. Still, that's what playstation 3 is for...

"Many go to university because they think it's prestigious. But most of us know that we may still be working at the sandwich shop" after graduation, Fatima Bouziane, a sociology student at the University of Saint-Denis, said as she headed to a part-time cafe job in a bleak neighborhood north of Paris.
(snip)

If corporations didn't offshore the jobs people study for at university... :shrug:

"The world is indifferent to tradition and past reputations, unforgiving of frailty and ignorant of custom or practice," he said. "Success will go to those individuals and countries which are swift to adapt, slow to complain, and open to change."

Ouch. Mind you, as other people might say, "Life is what you make of it".

The entire article (which is long) seems to skim certain realities, but there is some unquestionable truth in it too. Still, with all the details not being mentioned (especially corporations building training centers in the local countries; I suppose that's cheaper than doing the H1B and 'temporary worker' fluffery going on), and why the same corporations won't do the same things in Europe and America, one wonders why the plot holes?

[Deja Q]

1. kick?

:kick:

[The2ndWheel]

2. The price of specialization

At some point we'll have to go to a pre-school that is designed for a future in _____. Hell, the moment we're born we'll need to know what job we want.

[Fovea]

3. The weakness of a system based on privilege

rather than the need to educate the entire citizenship of a nation is that education is not simply to certify your career.

Education is the first precondition for democracy.

[originalpckelly]

4. The utilitarian aspects of higher learning ought to be available for free...

to anyone.

There should be programs in the classics, but the classics won't help Western countries compete with the East. We need to understand that.

And people ought to consider charging for that in European countries, where college is often free or extremely cheap.

In our own country we need to understand that there is a utility for all of us in having an educated population.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. Actually, until the 1970s, companies in the U.S. (and Europe) hired

liberal arts graduates for management trainee positions and then (gasp!) trained them. I found this out when I went on informational interviews in the early 1980s. None of the companies I talked to was hiring anyone without a business or computer science degree, but ALL of the current executives I talked to had been English majors, music majors, history majors, math majors, you name it. They all said, "I wouldn't even be allowed to apply for my job today."

Japan held onto the "generalist" view of management training longer than the U.S. did. They hired new graduates and put them on a two- to three-year training program where they got a few months of experience in each major department of the company. After that, it was decided which department they were best suited for.

This whole idea that only people with business or IT-related degrees are employable dates from the Reagan era. Business majors brought two advantages: 1) You didn't have to train them as long, and 2) They weren't as likely to be interested in investigating the human and ethical implications of company policies.

Not so coincidentally, IMHO, this is when customer service began to deteriorate in the U.S.

[nealmhughes]

8. The purpose of a classical liberal arts is not to provide one for an immediate job.

It is to "demonstrate" a roundness in education that leads to aquisition of job skills, more OJT than direct from the classroom to the cubicle.

A master's degree is now almost essential in any professional capacity, and even then, most graduate study, except in professional programs do not "really" prepare one for the jobs they will have.

What a graduate degree does prepare one for is the ability to do both research and a high degree of literacy and writing skills in a variety of formats: i.e., formal professional jargon in one's job, simple colloquial memos, formal proposals to outsiders, etc.

How can this be faulted?

The analytic skills taught by a liberal arts degrees is invaluable in any profession, whether it be in literature, history, or mathematics.

We have a fetish with the "prestige" of a BA/BS and MA/MS for documentation of job skills. It seems that many youth would actually be better off with techhnical skills than liberal arts concentration, but one should not be written off for the other. Together they have a collaborative task for our youth.

[treestar]

11. Not surprising to me; I went to college in the late 70s and early 80s and

majoring in English it was always, "What are you going to do with that?"

If it was job training school they maybe shouldn't have offered an English major? Or all the other stuff?

With technology changing so fast, it can't even be worth it now to limit oneself to one area as a result of a four year training period.

[Alcibiades]

6. The European system is strange and archaic

Or at least, that’s the case in Germany, the country with which I’m most familiar. Yes, it’s free, but it’s hard to get into a German university. You have to have pretty much set your sights on doing so from the time you are an infant, and, guess what, it’s pretty much the advantaged classes who do so. Egalitarian and elitist at the same time–sounds like there’s already some “Americanization” in the present model.

That being said, they do a much better job at educating working class folks for careers. Of course, thanks to their tracking system, if you don't do well in middle school you will never, ever get the chance to go to college. Conversely, in the US, today we give nearly everyone a college preparatory education, which is silly, and winds up turning a good many students off of the educational process entirely.

Here in the US, so many liberal arts students go to school simply because they think they will get a career making more money, which isn't necessarily the case anymore unless you do graduate work. Too few of them realize that, if what they really want is money, they would be better off training as (say) a welder or a nurse, many of whom earn as much or more than a Ph.D.

[treestar]

7. Only the rich can afford an old fashioned liberal education

Now it's job training school.

Which ought to be clear up front. And take out the unnecessary courses.

In fact, maybe the employers should train people. Why do we take on the expense of training ourselves for something, gambling that said skill will be needed by an employer for the next 50 years? Let them do the job training.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. Or, as in my post #5, have the employers do all the training AND

give everyone a decent liberal arts education in high school, such as one gets with the International Baccalaureate curriculum?

[Kellanved]

10. Nope, doesn't sound right

An university degree still is the very best guard against unemployment. Unemployment among university graduates is a small fraction of the general figure. Also, the salary outlook is far better. The article uses the wildly inflated figures published by China, to make a very RW case about the liberal university system, bordering on fearmongering. The number is IIRC: unemployment among University graduates is less than half from the "normal" figure. It's far lower among fresh graduates, where unemployment is almost unheard off.

I don't quite get the problem with free/cheap schools. They're a huge benefit, because graduates can afford to work at far lower entry wages.

The real "Americanization" problem European universities are having is "Bologna". The EU dictated need to introduce pseudo-American Bachelor/Master degrees, which don't fit well with the existing traditions.