Dear Don,
Thank you for your post and the detail of the different problem issues.
I have also been arguing for some years (often on this list) that universities are, or should be, on the way out, and replaced by something better.
There are many other adult education approaches that are well established as result in better outcomes than universities for all stakeholders (except of course those within the universities).
A significant turning point issue for universities is the combination that the knowledge and skills (both amount and utility) they offer students are not so useful in the world as they could be, and having a university qualification is no longer a reasonable guarantee of the skills of graduates at both under-graduate and postgraduate levels.
The value of any qualification from any institution is dependent on the actual skills of the graduates emerging from their education. This cannot be assumed in terms of the status of the institution. For example there is a university I know that is rated as first class in research terms, yet gets only 1 star in terms of teaching quality. It gets good students yet the outcomes from any employer's perspective are poor. In contrast, a weaker university in research terms gets five stars for teaching and takes some of the most disadvantaged students and educates them well both for employers and for their future life. Employers know this and it reflects badly on universities own assessments of status. Similarly, I would guess that most on this list know of significant differences in the quality of postgraduate qualifications in design research from different institutions, and from each institution in different years.
Already it is well accepted that many university-level qualifications from non-university organisations are at least as valuable as those of universities. Cyber-security (e.g. CISSP), computer network design (e.g. CCIE) and project management (e.g. PMP, Prince2) come to mind as obvious examples.
The informal education sector has been focused on quality and success in alternative adult education outside universities for more than 150 years.
A source for English material on this is Tony Jeffs and Mark Smith's website www.infed.org and for thinker in this area at http://infed.org/mobi/category/thinkers-and-innovators/
Institutional examples of successful adult education alternatives to university education include Mechanics Institutes, settlement houses, and, historically, the madrassas that provided technological, legal, cultural (and design) education prior to colonialization.
Here at the Design Out Crime and CPTED Centre, we are building university-level professional education and certification in the areas in which we work (the design of environments, architectures, products, services and policies leading to crime reduction and improved quality of life).
As a matter of course we are assuming we can provide better education and set better certification standards than universities. At the same time, we are providing such education at significantly reduced costs to participants compared to universities. We already have a long track record in research in these areas to university standard and beyond.
It is clear that there are many other fields in which it is possible to create many different viable alternatives to universities.
Now is the time. As Don wrote - Hurrah!
Best regards,
Terry
==
Dr Terence Love
MICA, PMACM, MAISA, FDRS, AMIMechE
Director
Design Out Crime & CPTED Centre
Perth, Western Australia
[log in to unmask]
www.designoutcrime.org
+61 (0)4 3497 5848
==
ORCID 0000-0002-2436-7566
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Don Norman
Sent: Monday, 18 December 2017 6:08 AM
To: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: The University is dying. Hurrah. -- Who does the University serve in 2017?
The University is dying. Hurrah.
How do I not love you? Let me count the ways
- It talks about teaching when it should be focussed upon learning
- It has an outmoded view of education:
- That lectures are effective for learning whereas in fact, they are
simply the easiest thing to do for instructors, but the worst way to learn
for students
- It believes that it must teach students ALL the essentials they need,
whereas students forget most of the material as soon as the examination is
over. And if they ever do need it, they have to learn it all over again
- Which implies that students should learn how to learn as opposed to
whatever miscellaneous stuff the class has presented to them
- Education should be life-long, not just while young
- The division of courses into hour-long sessions, three times a week,
taught in quarters or semesters of roughly 10 or 15 weeks has no
educational benefits (but simply makes room scheduling easier).
Different material requires different educational structures and time
frames.
- Problem-based education (which is how many design courses are taught)
is not well supported. Moreover, these courses usually require a higher
teacher/student ratio than universities can afford
- The university is pricing itself out of existence, especially in the
United States, but in all countries (except that the cost is often hidden
because of state subsidies, free tuition, etc.)
- The internet makes impossible to learn anything you want, any time you
need it.
- <amy professors do not know anything about modern learning theory or
about how students learn. What they know is folk knowledge, usually based
on how they were taught. But professors are obviously an elite: they are
the ones that managed to get through school and are successful. They do not
represent the vast majority of students.
- Schools do a horrible job of preparing students for the world after
school. This is, in part, because most professors have never had a job
outside of the university. So professors think they know what skills are
needed, but they are provably wrong.
see
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/whats-college-good-for/546590/
Why do we have research universities?
The standard answer is because universities are excellent at studying, deep profound issues. That used to be true. Is it true today?
- Research costs money, and funding agencies (Foundations and
governments) are increasingly unable to or unwilling to pay.
- The pressure for academic publications to get a job and then, to get
promoted, has led to an outrageous increase in low-quality journals,
conferences, and publications. Many conferences are now dominated by
graduate students who need conference presentations and publications in
order to get jobs. The quality of the conferences is, as a result, low.
- Fake journals, fake data in prestigious, important journals,
duplication of publication ... all are common.
- Many academics are ill-trained. They do not understand the nature of
an argument, of logical thinking, of the role of evidence. This weakens the
quality of instruction, of research, of publications, and of reviewing.
- So much is being published that it is impossible to keep up, to
discover the important pieces from the crap.
- The increase in specializations means that the work is becoming more
and more abstract, more difficult for people outside of the specialized
area to follow, and less able for colleagues to evaluate.
- Universities still prize abstract, in-depth studies over applied work.
Applications, putting together the findings of the many disciplines, are of
critical importance, but they tend to be shunned or given extremely low
status by the University.
The entire system is broken: Education and Research
In my humble opinion
Don
--
Don Norman
Prof. and Director, DesignLab, UC San Diego [log in to unmask] designlab.ucsd.edu/ www.jnd.org <http://www.jnd.org/>
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|