University-level education has two roles: - educating students - evaluating their knowledge
The first role is about having the student as a consumer. The second role is about having the student's employer as a consumer. These two roles are obviously conflicting. In secondary-level education, this problem has been solved by having specialized and independent aptitude testing services. But this causes the standardization of knowledge, which is precisely counter to the idea of academic research which is about construction of new knowledge, and the diversity of it. What to do? University-level education, as many will confirm, is a waste of time for most students, just a prolonged aptitude test. Undergraduate studies have become rote, and academic scholarship has been banished to graduate studies. Everyone is paying 4 wasted years of life: potential scholars are not able to jump into scholarship, where they would excel, and unpotential scholars are not able to jump into practice, where they would excel. We are financing hordes of incompetent academics who keep inventing new journals, conferences and workshops just to keep their bean counters happy. I'm sorry. Aleks . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
