Professor Cappelli is the George W. Taylor Professor of Management and Director of the Center for Human Resources at the Wharton School and Professor of Education. His article is titled “Why Focusing Too Narrowly in College Could Backfire”
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324139404579016662718868576
It gives some good practical advice and I think it is well worth reading. Some of the advice is excellent in that it warns students and parents about being misled by universities. Here is some of the advice that I don’t agree with.
He calls an education a “product”. To some degree it is. What worries me more is the focus on whether students graduate in six years. That number can be increased legitimately by providing help and guidance to students. On the other hand, it is an easy number to manipulate. When US News counted transfering out of a school against schools, even the venerable U. of Chicago worried that they were essentially not easy enough to be competitive. Students who didn’t want to have to learn material that had served the university’s educational mission well were transferring out.
The students at Chicago were leaving because they didn’t want to learn so much about liberal arts, something that Prof. Cappelli’s article points out is important. Knowledge of liberal arts is critical to an education and our society, as Johathan Jacobs points out here: Why the Demise of Liberal Arts (And, Thus, Clear Thinking) Matter For The Future of America Having only recently observed how important it can be for a career though, I have to add my two bits. It’s simple. Spending time in college reading and listening to people, and trying to understand what they are saying, really is valuable in meetings and other settings. So is the experience of surviving reading a bunch of stuff you really don’t want to read.
I did comment on the WSJ site, warning that parents and students need to be careful in accepting what they are told. Here is my comment.
“As a former professor, I must sadly warn parents and students that the very first job they need to do in searching for a school is to assume that the school is trying to mislead them. That has become quite common (and this article alludes to that fact in a couple of places) since 1980 when the famous sociologist David Riesman noted that “…advantage can…be taken of [students] by unscrupulous instructors and institutions…the student estate often does not grasp its own interests, and those who speak in its name are not always its friends…” He added that “…students are often misled in their choices…”
Potential students are seen as potential “consumers”, not potential learners. Maybe they are seen as investors, which would be better. In any case, they are by definition uneducated consumers and institutions know this, and many of them prey on it. So my warning is “caveat emptor”.
(For anyone who wants to see just how bad this can get, go to my story about my experience teaching a critical course at Washington University in St. Louis, a highly ranked school. Just click on A Tale Out of School on my blog www.inside-higher-ed.com. You can also find examples there of how schools can mislead students and parents – from average SAT scores to salaries.)”
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