Knowledge for the Sake of Knowledge -- A Thing of the Past?

At first reading, a recent Forbes article, "What Happens When Business Starts Accrediting America's Colleges," seems quite reasonable. The impetus for the article is a new report by the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation. The report criticizes accreditation as “operated by higher education for higher education” rather than as a quality measurement in tune with the needs of employers and would-be employees. The report sites a recent survey that only 11% of business leaders believe college graduates are equipped for entering the workforce. 

Self-evaluation as the primary means of measuring success certainly seems like a flawed system. But the Chamber proposes that because this measurement is most probably not sufficient, it should be completely abandoned in favor of an alternative.

According to Forbes, "The report argues that higher education should use the principles of supply chain management, with colleges and employers working together to develop performance measures to assure that graduates have the workforce skills they need."  Hmmm... So as an alternative to the status quo, we're turning colleges into trade skills for business to completely free them of any need to train employees on the job?

I'm both the proud and reluctant owner of liberal arts degree. I relish the cultural literacy and critical thinking skills that I acquired in college and graduate school. At the same time, I bemoan the complete lack of practical skills that I possessed when I graduated. I was fortunate that "back in the day," IBM was hiring liberal arts majors and training them. Something unheard of today. My fellow liberal-arts colleagues and I quickly learned the necessary skills both in training classes and on the job. We weren't crack accountants by any means but it wasn't that hard to learn the basics of creating or analyzing a balance sheet and income statement. And my previously little-trained logical mind took to programming like a fish to water. Plus, we came to the table with a depth of knowledge, flexibility, and agility of mind that our business-major colleagues were challenged to match. Businesses today say that they value innovative thinking and flexibility, but how do you measure those things (or develop them) in the supply chain that the Chamber is proposing.

[Disclaimer: My higher education coincided with the Viet Nam era, when business was a "jock major" and the best and brightest chose fields of study that were frowned on by the "military industrial complex." So perhaps the comparison above is a bit unfair.]

With the mushrooming costs of higher education, parents and students alike feel compelled to ensure that a good paying job awaits. But does that have to mean that colleges become trade schools? Whatever happened to aspiring to cultural literacy that was so in vogue after the publication the book by of E.D. Hirsch, Jr? We learn so much from a good historical novel, but who will be the authors in the next generation if our best minds are trained to meet the specs of the business supply chain?

Despite the dynamics of this era of polarity and intense distrust between academia and business, I think a compromise is in order. Economics and competition dictate that the majority of our graduates have some employer-ready skills. But employers also need people to be innovative, adaptable, self-motivated, and, let's face it, just plain interesting. What we need is a well-rounded curriculum with both breadth and depth that teaches students to think and to do along with a joint measurement system that evaluates a broad spectrum of capabilities.