Alternative Universities?

[ExponentialDecay]

http://www.upworthy.com/what-if-colleges-had-no-departments-offered-no-majors-and-students-only-took-one-class-at-a-time?c=hpstream

 

tl;dr It's a soundbyte about Quest University in Canada, which is pioneering yet another alternative undergraduate program that doesn't have majors, departments, tracks, etc. Starting at 7.30 is a bit about faculty research at Quest.

 

The dude says, at the beginning, that the current college system is optimized for the 19th century, whereas now we need critical thinking etc. to prepare students for the modern workforce. I have two issues: his plan for preparing students for the modern workforce is rather wishy-washy, and the notion of preparing students for the workforce is of itself problematic. I don't know anything about Canada, so maybe this is the first college of its kind there, but in the states, Hampshire in MA, Evergreen in WA, Naropa in CO and countless others come to mind, and so far they haven't impacted the higher education landscape very much, and many of their graduates, especially in the sciences, struggle to become acceptable to institutions. Although they do teach some killer humanities classes.

 

The only thing is, these schools look like fun places to teach at. You can make your own curriculum that carries over into later years and mentor your students throughout their education. 

[GreenePony]

I agree, sounds sort of wishy washy.

 

I don't see having a diversified required course load as novel. I had to take stats, math, lab sciences, English (comp and reading), foreign language, "human performance", political science, religion, humanities, and fine arts classes like everyone else in my undergrad on top of my major and minor classes, and I went to a "normal" college (Baylor.) Sure, I'm more "well rounded" than my current cohort, but most of that doesn't make me more hireable and very few employers are looking for my undergrad CV, so how would they know or why would they care?

 

(Also, companies don't want faster coders? My DH would disagree. Sure, he has job security because he explain it to the business side  - because he chose those classes in undergrad- but the slow coders are seen as far more disposable. That whole 'time is money' thing.)

[actuallyatree]

I'd have loved to have attended Quest, and I think it would be pretty cool to teach at, but the alternative schools tend to also be very expensive. Quest is something like $25000 a year, compared to the $3000-$6000 it costs to attend most universities in Canada. Quest is the first, and I think still the only school like this in Canada, and it gets a fair amount of attention as a result.

 

I worry as well that these alternative universities will lack many of the resources that are essential to a university education. I attended a rather small school for the bulk of my undergrad, and the library was beyond useless for resources, and the school didn't have access to many of the databases I needed to get articles from, so I was forced to convince my friends at bigger schools to give me their login information.

 

The mentoring of students and personal curriculum design is something I saw at my traditional, small undergrad school. I think that is more a matter of size than of structure.

[PhDerp]

My friends at Hampshire have difficulty sometimes trying to convey their educational history for job interviews and graduate school applications. But man, I know students there who are taking crazy intensive courseloads, and they make it look like a breeze because they just... Really love learning the material. Even when they don't love a particular topic as much, they know they need it, so they get it done. It really is different than my state university!

[vityaz]

Interesting, but paying 20k+ per year for a degree that employers are more than likely not going to understand/respect is a bad idea.

Edited March 25, 2014 by vityaz

[DigDeep(inactive)]

I read the title as "Alternate Universe". I am dissapoint. 

[ExponentialDecay]

Idk, my experience with alternative schools is that all the students majoring in the non-humanities end up taking classes off-campus because the free structure allows for delving into a broad array of sources and aspects, but not so much for learning the methodology of a field. Although, literally the reason I've hated science all my life is because of those pointless labs where they force you to sit there for 3 hours collecting pointless data to elucidate a relationship that is obvious/clearly described in the text book. Idk perhaps curricular changes are needed, but they need to be more nuanced than what has been done since the 60s.

 

Also, we really haven't departed much from the 19th century model, economically speaking.

[DigDeep(inactive)]

 I've hated science all my life

 

ugh. Hyperbole?

Edited March 25, 2014 by DigDeep

[AwesomeBird]

I attended Eugene Lang (The New School for Liberal Arts), in which students are allowed to customize their own field of study. Really, one could choose to follow the typical, more focused form of study, or explore more alternative modes of study. I was probably somewhere in the middle. I think I probably took around 3 tests throughout the 4 years there, never one science course, nor math, nor English for that matter. Only courses required for my concentration (Culture and Media), and then whatever the hell else I wanted to take.  I'm sure I learned more in those four years than the collective 26 of my life. That being said, it definitely didn't prepare me for one specific line of work. Most people in my class either went into film or graduate school in hopes of teaching/working in the school. I think the school's aim is not so much dedicated to making students professionals in a certain line of work, rather than making them activists in any line of work.

[overworkedta]

My experience is that while it's good to be well-rounded, it can be hard to sell these things.

 

Indiana had an "individualized major" program while I was there (still does, as far as I know) but it was kind of a joke.  The whole point was to challenge traditional ed, which I think could be good, but it really didn't "do" anything.  This guy was in my year (graduated with me) and he was in my dorm freshman year.  Apart from being incredibly weird, forcibly hitting on me and all my friends, and showing up at odd times to stalk my next door neighbor, I didn't know him much but BOY did he get a lot of press when we graduated.  Despite that, he's apparently a bartender and does gigs at TGI Fridays.  Far be it from anyone to tell him what success looks like because he's allowed to be happy regardless of what anyone thinks but it's not like a magic major provided him a whole lot else.  Even the press on graduation didn't make him super famous.

 

So, I think these sorts of programs should have limits and should also allow students resources on "marketing" when they graduate.  This kid was an out of state student, paying about 30-grand per year base price (not sure if he had aid or anything, obviously) and now he has debt. What did he get for it?  I am sure the programs you are talking about aren't this off-the-wall but there are reasons you take certain "core" classes and learn certain methodologies and ways of reasoning to prepare you for grad school and jobs.

[ExponentialDecay]

I think the schools I've encountered that don't have an individualized major program are in the minority. Apparently at the bigger DI schools, they're used to basically graduate the basketball players, but the kids who have self-made majors at my place are all pretty hard-working, majoring in either legitimate stuff that the college doesn't offer (like linguistics and geography), or essentially specializing early (we had a peace and conflict studies major and a computational neuroscience major last year). I'm not even sure that doing away with majors is such a bad thing. I mean, if you go to any more or less competitive undergraduate institution, you'll find the English majors exposed to a lot of philosophy, and the economics majors exposed to a lot of math, etc. I would even say that I spend more time satisfying major requirements than I do doing shit that will get me into grad school/get me a job. The liberal arts system is kind of this dissatisfying amalgam whereby you're given the illusion of being able to take lots of classes in different disciplines, but actually you're very constrained by the trajectory of your major, which nonetheless does not prescribe enough core requirements to meet a satisfactory standard of depth and general level of preparation across the cohort. So you end up taking a bunch of bullshit classes because you either didn't get the requirements in early enough to take the classes you want, or because you need those bullshit classes to graduate.

[overworkedta]

Yeah, individualized major was not something the "slacker" kids did.  This kid was weird but he was also pretty smart and not a slacker from what I could see having a gen ed with him.  And as someone who worked for athletics while there, I can say that it wasn't an excuse for athletes.  Maybe here it would be (where I am now).  Whole 'nother world here.  But yeah, it wasn't for "slackers".  I just am not sure how I would feel sitting on an admissions panel listening to a kid coming in for "comparative health policy" (that could have been my major).  Mainly because many of us change our ideas about research after getting into a program here in the states.  So, I am not sure it's an incredible asset to be so narrowly-focused.  It may in some ways be a detriment if you are applying to a very interdisciplinary focused program or a program that has two subfields or very few people who do what you do (maybe that one person is the best in the field but they aren't taking students or only want to take one such student).

[ExponentialDecay]

Well sure individualized majors are a gamble, but they are necessary at least at small LACs, where relatively few majors are offered. I mean, it's not like you're gonna go around saying that biochem isn't a legit field. Maybe it's not popular enough to warrant its own department at a small college, but it's legit. But you need to be a self-starter, which is why I am wary of schools where everybody must have an individualized major.

[overworkedta]

That is a good point.  I think that "normal" majors that you would see at a large R-1 make sense in that way but something really, really specific may not be the best option.  Likewise, I could see how it could help you if you were applying to law or med school.  It just depends.

[MadtownJacket]

One problem I see with alternative universities is that there isn't consistency across the "individualized" majors.  HR folks are receiving thousands of resumes, and they don't have time to sort through them and read every single class that a student has taken just to make sure they learned at least the basics.  It's a lot easier to read resumes knowing that a degree in biology from University of Wisconsin consists of the bare minimum courses the student needs for the job than it is to look at a "degree" from an alternative university and wonder what courses the student took.