Are Universities & Degrees Still Relevant?

For more than 150 years the basic college degree- the Baccalaureate or Bachelor’s degree – has been the hallmark of an educated person. During the 19^th and most of the 20^thcenturies, attending university was largely the province of wealthy men – fewer than 20% of all high school graduates attended any college.  And women were woefully underrepresented.

Universities helped the world make the transition from rural to urban, from the simple occupations of the 18^th century to the far more and increasingly complex occupations of the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

The number of graduates rose rapidly after World War II as the GI bill in the U.S. and easier access in Europe added thousands of graduates. More and more jobs required a degree – jobs that had never required one before. This was partly due to the growing complexity of knowledge, but also because of other economic and demographic reasons. A rising number of graduates from universities meant that jobs had to be reserved for them, so the degree requirement became a kind of filter to reduce the number of applicants who did not have one. The degree requirement also ensured there were enough non-degreed people to fill the thousands of manufacturing jobs that were being created by a wide variety of firms after the war.

And, of course, the business of education became an end in itself.  Universities prospered and employed thousands from administrators and janitors to professors. In order to keep employment and enrollments high, they exerted pressure, both subtle and active, to professionalize work and by doing so expanded their reach to include many more types of work than ever before.

By the turn of the 20th century, almost every meaningful job required a degree of some sort, whether a 2-year degree, a 4-year degree (a Bachelor’s in the U.S.), or an advanced one. Those professions once learned mainly through practice or apprenticeship such as medicine, law, accounting, pharmacy, or school teaching became formalized and required formal study, a degree and a license. Apprenticeships virtually disappeared in the U.S. although some European countries maintained them.

But are these institutions and degrees still relevant as we move into the 21^st century? Do their traditional modes of teaching and research serve the needs of a mobile, global, connected society? Do the degrees ensure quality and knowledge and competence?

There have been some attempts to modernize. Accessibility has been widened through such institutions as the University of Phoenix, Capella University and others. These schools offer either local education or virtual education or a combination of these to working adults, rural students, and to those who cannot afford to live on or near a campus.

They also use modern techniques for teaching which include the use of interactive media, e-learning, the Internet and video.  Unfortunately, traditional institutions have only weakly adopted these methods – and then largely because of budget pressures.

But traditional universities, who have only weakly adopted some of these tools, have already launched a media and political campaign to discredit the schools and their teaching and financing methods.  While there is certainly room for criticism and none of them are perfect, the same is the case for the traditional schools.

Even changes and curricula revisions that have been suggested by current academics , while significantly improving on the disjointed classes  and curricula we offer students today, are still far too traditional and Western in orientation to meet the needs of a global society or attract a young generation of academics.

Young men are already shunning universities. Almost two-thirds of all graduates are women and, although the number of men who start college is the same as the number of women, most drop out or never complete the requirements. They are bored and disengaged. They see little value in what they are learning and have the confidence and gender-bias in their favor to walk away and try something entrepreneurial or something that they can learn to do on their own.

So, what is the best approach to 21^st Century education?

Is it is distribution, different credentialing, less credentialing, more self-learning, more choice?  Is the degree relevant? For everyone who needs one today?

I would love to get your inputs and thoughts. We need some original thinking and clearly some changes.