That might be wrong. Universities in the US work for a few, but are overall failing to create a workforce for the 21st century. Many universities are starting to question their own models, but are stuck in their current state. Why should Latin America and the Caribbean try to catch up with a system that is itself in need of reform?
Let's turn that logic on its head. The region should not try to catch up to the best universities elsewhere in the world. Instead, it should rethink the whole model.
Let me start with two points, and hopefully add more in future posts:
- The hemisphere's higher education should focus on research, development and actually building things rather than the production of academic papers.
- They should experiment with new structures for learning rather than mirroring what is done within US and European universities.
Few analysts criticize the fact that Latin America's telephone landline infrastructure never matched the US. Instead, the region is praised for leapfrogging technologies and getting cell phones and increasingly smart phones into the hands of many people who never had access to telecommunications 10 to 20 years ago. We should think of universities in a similar way. Rather than hoping Latin America and the Caribbean can catch up with universities in the US, Europe and Asia, we should ask how the region can leapfrog to the next version that is just now being considered in those regions.
8 comments:
Your blog looks interesting. While I sympathize with your intention of looking at aspects not often given much attention by the pundits, perhaps you might also take some time to look at an idea that is old and overworked (but at the same time has not been implemented successfully, at least not here in the Caribbean). I'm talking about regional integration. I may clarify my ideas further on, but I think regional integration could be looked at under a new light, taking into consideration the technological changes that you are already pondering here.
I would look at northern Europe's educational model. The US has the idea that everybody needs a university degree to succeed. But Germany and the Netherlands (and others) have shown that there can be a sliding scale, where university only lies at one end. Different levels of vocational training (from manual labor skills up to high school teaching) account for other ends of the scale. Rather than expecting that everybody can get an equal higher education, governments should ensure that everybody has equal access to education at the skill levels appropriate. It should be possible for people to apply for higher levels, but this should not be necessary for people to be successful in life.
Sean, good points on the technical and vocational schools. I agree. But I want to go a step further here. I don't know that the current higher education system, whether your engineering or my liberal arts degree, is necessarily structured correctly for us.
Dr. Matthews, regional integration is great, but I want to think solidly about what it looks like. Too often, people referring to integration simply want more and different meetings among governments. There need to be economic, social and political components to these agreements that will reshape the region, not just create new bureaucracies. I'll address in future posts.
Your statements are a bit too vague to comment on.
You say that these "universities simply don't compete well" but what do you mean by "compete"? What is "better"?
This is too vague to handle: "Universities in the US work for a few, but are overall failing to create a workforce for the 21st century. Many universities are starting to question their own models, but are stuck in their current state." What does the 21st-century workforce look like? What is the "current state"?
You say that the "hemisphere's higher education should focus on research, development and actually building things rather than the production of academic papers" but that sounds like you want to turn higher education into a manufacturing business instead of something that contributes to the universal body of knowledge.
The gist I get is that you say things should change and they should not take into account the myriad of other ways that have been tried around the world. Or at least, that's what I guess you mean by "experiment with new structures" because you imply that "new" is the non-European and non-American way. But in order to improve in a monotonic fashion, you must to learn from the approaches of others and adapt it to your own situation.
In order to determine what is better, you need to have a metric. What is the new metric that you suggest?
Also, why focus on only higher education? I think the sliding scale I mentioned could apply to both secondary and tertiary education. The university model also tends to imply a college-preparatory secondary school, something that is not appropriate (and indeed often not desired) for everyone to be successful in the workforce.
Less vague; more details. I'll see what I can do in the 58 days or so I have remaining.
I like your suggestion about the "metric" to set the strategy and measure a new system's effectiveness. What would you suggest?
As an aside, I'm somewhat passionate about education, so that's why I'm picking on this article. I hope I'm not coming off as too negative; I sometimes do that without thinking about it.
As for metrics, at the broadest level, I would look at (1) contribution to society and (2) individual "happiness." A high level of #1 should mean that the society is functioning well and the economy is productive. A high level of #2 means that society is giving to each individual what s/he needs to be successful (for that individual's notion of success). Of course, these are too broad, so let's try to narrow it to education.
We can maybe measure the social contribution by the rate of employment coming out of the highest level of education chosen. After education, did people find jobs that suited them (and did they perhaps stay with those jobs for a year)?
Another thought is that the social contribution should be valuable. For example, how many people at each education level vote? (Of course, this may be a non-question if voting is mandatory.) There should also be some baseline of education that indicates a person will help move the society forward. How well does the population understand the basic issues of the day? How easily deceived are they by lies and propaganda? A citizen who believes that the Earth is flat will most likely not understand basic foreign policy concepts (for example).
Individual happiness can perhaps be measured by the availability of educational opportunities. Will more education help advance an individual's goals (e.g. a better or different job)? Can a person afford more education? Are parents happy with their children's education? Does the disadvantaged population have access to the same quality of education as the advantaged?
These are just some thoughts. Still vague, of course. Feel free to shoot the ideas down.
One of the things that influenced me while writing this post was the Michael Crow speech at Google's We Solve for X website.
Nice talk.
That's a different orientation than I was thinking. Crow (and, I guess, you) are coming from the question of how to change the university itself. I'm coming from the question of how to structure an education system. There are certainly issues with universities, but I think if you're going to talk about a moonshot project, why not change the entire educational system?
Crow's focus seems to be on the research and integration side, and he's coming from a university architect's point of view. My focus (above) is the systematic issues with how education is done today, and I'm coming from a social architect's point of view.
The two views are certainly not mutually exclusive, and they might even relate in some ways. In the US, at least, I think the bigger problems with education are social and political. Not knowing the general state of education in Latin America, I can't make the same claim.
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