Prof Thangavelu,
"End the University as We Know It" by Mark C. Taylor,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Well written. Profound, too.
Two (all were, actually) notable suggestions I liked were:
2. Abolish permanent departments, even for undergraduate education, and create problem-focused programs. ... such zones of inquiry could be organized: Mind, Body, Law, Information, Networks, Language, Space, Time, Media, Money, Life and Water.
Good idea, and I wondered: why cannot our management schools focus on local problems within a radius of (say 5 km) instead of 'summer training' and 'live projects'? Problems like sanitation, solid waste, traffic, education, small business, lighting etc. Our students would learn about working and understanding together (HR/OB/leadership/EI etc), would build more concern for society (sustainable development etc), would respect time (which is not in any syllabus), and would be more employable due to their new-found affinity for work and for society.
4. Transform the traditional dissertation.
I abolished the PPT-based presentation for my students, 5-6 years. Presentations must be for 15 minutes without notes (they may write on the whiteboard), and include numbers. This year, photos - clicked by them - have been introduced. We may have interviews this year.
Best wishes.
--------------------------------------------------------
The great aim of education is not knowledge but action. ~ Herbert Spencer
Dr Vinod Dumblekar
MANTIS
Management Simulation Games
design | development | delivery
Ph : +91.9818631280
From: Madan Thangavelu <madan.thangavelu2@gmail.com>
To: Dr Vinod Dumblekar <dumblekar@yahoo.com>; Krishan Khanna <krishankhanna.iit@gmail.com>
Cc: Bholanath Dutta <bnath.dutta@gmail.com>; Virendra Goel <goel.virendra@gmail.com>; Jaganmohan Reddy <drjaganmohanreddy@gmail.com>; ORS Rao <orsrao.icfai@gmail.com>; Nagarajan V <vnagarajan99@gmail.com>; Surender Reddy <gsr123@gmail.com>; Ramesh Vemuganti <vemugantiramesh@gmail.com>; Ananda Reddy <anandareddy@hotmail.com>; Pratap Reddy <drspratapreddy@yahoo.co.in>
Sent: Sunday, November 3, 2013 5:23 AM
Subject: Re: [MTC Global] The Economy Does Not Depend on Higher Education
(The Blind Spots in Education Today and Blind Spots of Economic Thought: there are many invaluable thoughts in the documents at the links below - many that resonate with points highlighted by Dr. Vinod Dumblekar and justify the call by Krishan Khanna for 'vocational education and training')
Perhaps what is needed now are collections of small-scale prototypes ... to prototype the new by creating living examples, and to evolve with the changing environment.
Perhaps some of the points in the document circulated earlier (Rudolf H Strahm "Swiss Vocational Education and Training - Switzerland's Source of Richness") for instance the list of trades under the Swiss Dual System Apprenticeship Education and Training Scheme: 243 Trades in 22 Vocational Fields orThe Vishwakarma Apprenticeship Education Project (http://www.joshi-foundation.ch/pages/vishwakarma.htm) hold models.
The Rajendra & Ursula Joshi Charitable Foundation (www.joshi-foundation.ch) and Shri Krishna Khanna can guide us in evolving the small-scale prototypes and 'living examples'
================================================================
Below, the opening paragraph of a 2009 (Published: April 26, 2009 ) New York Times Op-Ed, "End the University as We Know It" by Mark C. Taylor, Chair of the Department of Religion, Columbia University (http://religion.columbia.edu/people/Mark%20C.%20Taylor)
"End the University as We Know It" by Mark C. Taylor,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
GRADUATE education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans).
Widespread hiring freezes and layoffs have brought these problems into sharp relief now. But our graduate system has been in crisis for decades, and the seeds of this crisis go as far back as the formation of modern universities. Kant, in his 1798 work "The Conflict of the Faculties," wrote that universities should "handle the entire content of learning by mass production, so to speak, by a division of labor, so that for every branch of the sciences there would be a public teacher or professor appointed as its trustee." ... (more at the link including some invaluable recommendations)
Otto Scharmer of The Presencing Institute (PI; http://www.presencing.com)] and creator of "Theory U" (Theory U: Leading from the future as it emerges. The social technology of presencing) picks up this theme and elaborates in his essay "The Blind Spot of Economic Thought: Seven Acupuncture Points for Shifting to Capitalism 3.0."
http://www.ottoscharmer.com/docs/articles/2009_SevenAcupuncturePoints5.pdf
http://www.ottoscharmer.com/docs/articles/2009_SevenAcupuncturePoints5.pdf
I copy below a section - about the 6th 'accupuncture point'!
(6) A Global Action Leadership School for Pioneering the Green Transformation
The sixth acupuncture point concerns the evolution of leadership and learning.
... But the problem is not just in American universities. It's in institutions of higher education everywhere.
But if Taylor is correct, and if society doesn't need many of the skills that are taught at the kinds of universities we already have (and if many people can't pay the price to attend), what would work better? What specific capacities will be mission-critical in this century regardless of whether you go into business, social entrepreneurship, government, journalism, or another line of work? Here is what I have learned about this question.
Having spent the past 15 years observing, facilitating, and co-leading change projects in different sectors, systems, and cultures, what strikes me most is that whether it is the car industry, the computer industry, the health care system, the education system, or government, the basic problem is the same:leaders repeatedly respond to problems by pulling all of the usual triggers.
But more of the same will not be good enough. Leaders and managers face issues that require them to slow down, and even to stop; and then they need to start paying attention, listening, reaching out, listening more, sensing what wants to happen, and reflecting deeply and connecting to an inner source of knowing, the inner place of silence where knowing comes to the surface. And leaders and change-makers must do all of that collectively.
Then, when a spark of insight or inspiration shows itself, they can focus on that and move with it, quickly creating small-scale prototypes that allow them to explore that spark by doing something, by generating feedback, and by applying what they learn. Those are skills needed today in all jobs, industries, and cultures. And they are skills that, today, can't be learned on a campus, particularly not as a collective capacity that can be applied in real communities to complex and difficult issues of social transformation and change.
That is the blind spot of higher education today.
To fill that blind spot you need to turn the institution inside out. You need to abandon most of the conventional discipline- based knowledge canons. Those canons still represent the Middle Ages in our time. Then, what will be left? Nothing much.
And that is where the future begins. That nothingness is the place of possibility, where new learning and a new configuration of the university can take place.
Here are three sources that I consider critical for the new configuration of the university: (1) societal challenges: specific societal challenges like "urban sustainability transformation" that frame action research partnerships and situate cross-discipline and cross-sector engagements; (2) students: the questions, aspirations, and self-knowing that students (and faculty) bring to the table; and (3) foundational methods and tools: a social technology for dealing with the challenges that citizens, organizations, communities, and leaders face, challenges that require us both to reflect the past and to sense and actualize the emerging future.
A strong foundation in methods and tools will enable the student to attend, to listen, to think and reflect deeply, to create generative conversations, to move into situations that are unknown, to empathize with others, to connect to the deeper sources of humanity that are in all of us, to crystallize vision and intention, to prototype the new by creating living examples, and to evolve with the changing environment.
On Sat, Nov 2, 2013 at 4:57 PM, Dr Vinod Dumblekar <dumblekar@yahoo.com> wrote:
That higher education (except the technical courses like medicine and engineering) produces skills is a fallacy.
That employers seek attitudes (to learn and to work with others) and skills (ability to do work) is a secret that we must make public.
That they have any interest in students' knowledge (actually only data and information in textbooks, cases, and newspapers) is a fallacy.
Before the Internet, knowledge (actually only data and information) was difficult to acquire. Books and newspapers were scarce.Today, teenagers probably read the news on their Android phones earlier than those of us who wait for the next day's papers.Our permissive culture means that youngsters receive information, while those older, weighed down by tons of inhibitions, probably refuse to read or listen.We become less risk-averse once we acquire a degree. Clearly, higher education (even slightly higher than 10+2) tends to reduce our courage.May be, our boldness is because we cease to be teenagers - and become adults - at graduation. As we grow older, we tend to dare less.Higher education eats into our concept of what we think we can do.My best guess is that about a tenth of our 10+2 students go on to become graduates, and about a twentieth of our graduates go on to 'higher' education. I do not have the exact figure: my sincere apologies for any errors here.From a purely economic perspective, the 10+2 student seeks a degree to reduce his risk for finding a job.
Ditto for the graduate who seeks the post grad degree. The risk aversion is sometimes visible here.
A national economy needs risk takers (non grads) to do the dirty work (i.e. risky stuff) for growth and innovation.
It can afford to have (unskilled, non technical) grads and post grads, who need to be trained before being given responsible roles.Thankfully, our economy has a large number of pre-grads vis-a-vis the grads and non-grads.
I have lumped the grads along with post-grads, and referred to higher education students as post-grads, although the discussion referred to higher education only.
My opinions here may offend some MTCG members, as most of them are post-grads.
Hence, it is copied to only to others whom, I think, could discuss such opinions without shooting me, the messenger.
Best wishes.--------------------------------------------------------The great aim of education is not knowledge but action. ~ Herbert Spencer
Dr Vinod DumblekarMANTISManagement Simulation Gamesdesign | development | deliveryPh : +91.9818631280
From: Prof. Bholanath Dutta <bnath.dutta@gmail.com>
To: 'MTC' <join_mtc@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, November 2, 2013 8:54 PM
Subject: [MTC Global] The Economy Does Not Depend on Higher Education
--The Economy Does Not Depend on Higher Education
By Arthur M. Cohen, Carrie B. Kisker, and Florence B. BrawerThe presumption that a shortage of educated people is responsible for a stagnant economy has been repeated frequently, especially since the onset of the recession, in 2008. A commission sponsored by the American Association of Community Colleges concluded that the nation's fiscal problems were accentuated by the fact that 59 percent of all employees needed postsecondary degrees or certificates for their jobs. In announcing the American Graduation Initiative, President Obama specified that an additional five million college graduates were needed because the nation's economy depended on the education of its workers. The Lumina Foundation has declared the imminence of an economic decline due to a gap of 23 million two- and four-year degrees by 2020.These contentions tying the state of the economy to the number of people completing college programs are not warranted. Full-time employment declined by 5.7 million from November 2007 to November 2011, a figure that does not include the millions more who lost their jobs and gave up seeking new ones after their unemployment benefits ran out. Had all the laid-off workers somehow become unskilled and forgotten how to work? Or had their jobs been downsized, automated, or exported out from under them?No reliable data are available showing the number of certificates or degrees needed for work-force development, unemployment reduction, or economic improvement. The oft-cited shortfall of millions of degrees is based on deceptive reasoning: Credentials are not even relevant for most jobs. For example, the great majority of jobs that were sent overseas have been filled by people less educated than the Americans they displaced. These jobs will not return until the declining salaries paid in the United States intersect with rising wages in other countries; that is, until the United States gets closer to the bottom in the worldwide race to pay the lowest wages for the same work.Discouraging as such a concept may be, the trend toward lower-paying jobs is already evident. Most jobs that were lost during the recession paid mid-level wages, but the majority of positions filled in the recovery pay less. Those jobs that paid from $7.69 to $13.83 per hour accounted for 21 percent of the job losses during the recession but 58 percent of the job growth from late 2009 through early 2012. The mid-level occupations with hourly pay of up to $21.13 accounted for 60 percent of the jobs lost but only 22 percent of the new hires. Furthermore, this June, the Labor Department reported 2.7 million temporary workers, the highest number in history. If they were included in the statistics, they would further depress the salary figures.Recently the U.S. unemployment rate dropped below 7.2 percent as thousands of workers regained their old jobs or found new employment. In particular, residential construction has revived, and the building industry has added 377,000 jobs over the past two years. Legions of carpenters, electricians, plumbers, and equipment operators have returned to work. It is doubtful that many of them obtained postsecondary credentials while they were unemployed, nor did those who regained their jobs selling building supplies, home furnishings, or appliances as a consequence of increased construction activity.Advances in productivity in other countries have not depended on significant increases in schooling. For many years, the apprenticeship systems in Japan and Northern Europe have been popular ways of preparing the work force. Short-term technical and vocational programs are another. Contentions that problems of international competitiveness can be solved by increasing the years of schooling divert attention from the corporate managers who exported the jobs originally, lobbied incessantly to avoid paying taxes on the profits derived thereby, converted full-time positions to part-time to avoid paying benefits, and did not invest significantly in on-the-job training for their remaining workers.The paucity of corporate-training and apprenticeship programs creates a niche business opportunity for postsecondary institutions—community colleges and for-profit enterprises, especially—to provide worker training and curricula to upgrade skills. Indeed, these occupational programs have received $2-billion in special federal funds over the past four years and will undoubtedly contribute to the number of people holding postsecondary degrees and certificates.At first glance, everyone wins with efforts to encourage more people to go to college, such as the College Board's College Completion Agenda, for which the goal is to have 55 percent of Americans with college degrees by 2025. Community colleges and for-profit institutions increase their enrollments, and in the latter case, profit from tuition revenues subsidized almost wholly by federal student-aid programs. Businesses gain skilled workers at little or no cost to themselves. And America's workers can add a new line or two to their résumés. But the question remains: Are all these new degrees and certificates necessary?The data on necessary educational levels are based on variant definitions. The Current Population Survey administered by the U.S. Census Bureau classifies more than 60 percent of all jobs as postsecondary, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports half as many: 31 percent. This wide discrepancy is because the CPS tallies the education levels of people who are currently working in various jobs, whereas the BLS statistics reflect the entry-level education requirements for those jobs (a classification that seems to change from year to year). Thus, the job held by a college-educated barista would be classified as postsecondary by the CPS but not by the BLS. Obviously, jobs data that trace the degrees held by current employees are subject to distorted interpretation.The Economic Policy Institute's review of job data shows that 52 percent of employed college graduates under the age of 24 are working in jobs that don't require college degrees. Put another way, of the 21 million workers earning less than $10.01 per hour, 3.57 million hold college degrees and an additional 5.46 million have some college. That these sales representatives, clerks, cashiers, and restaurant servers hold associate or bachelor's degrees does not mean they needed to present them when they applied.Certainly higher education is desirable. The community gains people more likely to be charitable, to vote, and to participate in civic affairs, and less likely to rely on governmental assistance or engage in antisocial behavior. The individual learns to reason scientifically and think critically and gains a sense of historical perspective, an appreciation for aesthetics and cultural diversity, and access to training for the professions that require credentials.The notion that a person without a degree is doomed to unemployment is at best a widespread misconception, as unwarranted as blaming an economic recession on a paucity of skilled workers. The high unemployment numbers are not due to workers' lacking the right education. The numbers reflect the weak demand for goods and services, a weakness that makes it unnecessary for employers to hire workers at any level of education.Yet, sustained by the mutuality of interests between college educators who embrace the jobs attendant on high enrollments and the business leaders who profit from having their employees prepared at public expense, the misrepresentation persists. The statement "By the year 2018, all jobs will require a higher education," which comes from a report called "Help Wanted," by the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University, has become so commonplace that a version recently appeared as an advertisement on the rear of buses in Los Angeles. The sponsor? A local nonprofit group promoting its chain of preschools. Nobody would argue that greater access to education is a bad thing—especially for the preschool set—but the motives of those promoting these statements, as well as those who uncritically accept them out of self-interest, are open to question.Arthur M. Cohen is a professor emeritus of higher education at the University of California at Los Angeles and a former president of the Center for the Study of Community Colleges. Florence B. Brawer is former research director of the Center for the Study of Community Colleges. Carrie B. Kisker is a consultant in education research and policy based in Los Angeles. This article is adapted from their book, The American Community College (6th edition, Wiley, 2013).·· Get the insight you need for success in academe.Educate, Empower, ElevateProf. Bholanath DuttaFounder, Convener & PresidentMTC Global & Knowledge CafeParticipant: United Nations Global CompactISO 9001:2008 OrganizationCell: +91 96323 18178Email: president@knowledgecafe.org
MTC GLOBAL- Educate, Empower, Elevate
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