As a follow-up to last week’s column regarding income inequality and the importance of education as a possible antidote to the ever-widening gap between the wealthy and the diminishing middle class, I will focus more on the value of higher education.
Some caveats, please: I am neither an educator nor an advocate with access to extensive data. I am simply an observer, whose views have changed during the past several years. Allow me to explain.
I strongly believe that a liberal arts education is critical preparation for any career. You learn to think and write critically. Few would argue this premise.
I’ve learned that a four-year liberal arts education is not suited for everyone. A vocational education focused on learning a trade as, say, an electrician or car mechanic or refrigeration specialist, might be far more preferable and profitable for many ill-suited to sit in a classroom discussing symbolism in novels by Ernest Hemingway or political science textbooks analyzing the resurgence of democracy in Estonia.
Community colleges such as Chesapeake College, as workforce development assets, are invaluable resources of education and technical training. They teach marketable skills. They provide a bridge between secondary education and a four-year college by providing students and parents with a less expensive option and a means to determine a career path.
I think another reason that the education versus training discussion has gathered steam—besides endless workforce requirements—is the increasing cost of a four-year education in public and private colleges and universities. Parents justifiably are asking; is the increased cost worth it? Is my son or daughter really prepared for a well-paying and satisfying career?
An article in The New York Times on May 4, 2012 referred to a professor at George Mason University, Alex Tabarrok, who said that our country should look more to Europe, where apprenticeship programs produce skilled workers. He also said vocational training often carries a stigma in the United States. Another professor, at Columbia University, cautioned against a system where young men and women are marked early for vocational training and hence blocked perhaps from pursuing an academic track. This same professor said that “a good liberal arts degree isn’t simply a luxury when economic times are good, but a necessity at all times to create an engaged citizenry.”
A consulting professor at Stanford University, having studied undergraduate business programs in our country, said the best ones combined liberal arts education and professional training. For example, Indiana University offers a course enabling students to learn about automobiles at the same time they study the economy, politics and culture of the vehicle that controls our American lifestyle.
Now I will get personal. My son-in-law spent his freshman year at the University of Maryland, College Park, before dropping out and apprenticing himself for five years to a welder in Winchester, VA. He’s now a well-respected race car mechanic. He loves what he does. He would die behind a desk. His clients pay him well. His wife, with two degrees, is flourishing too in the white-collar world.
I said at the outset I’ve learned to alter my views over the years. While I still think a bachelor’s degree as well as a graduate education are critically important to success in our unpredictable economy, I think that productive and profitable opportunities abound for motivated people like my son-in-law. He took a perilous road less traveled by sons and daughters of well-educated parents. He did the right thing. He bucked conformity.
At the same time, I believe that four-year colleges and universities—though understandably attached to the overriding value of a liberal arts education—must become flexible in designing programs that not only expand minds and encourage, if not demand critical thinking, but inject practical lessons and maybe hands-on training.
To some educators, what I’m proposing might be sacrilege. For example—and maybe not a very good one—a study of Hemingway’s books might focus on risk-taking, or might be used to better understand foreign cultures. To Hemingway aficionados, please accept my apologies if I’ve ignored the key elements of the author’s literary works.
As a journalism and political science major, I suspect I could have been accused by my peers of learning a trade. Ironically, after observing my older daughter study journalism at another university, I decided that my education lacked the specificity and hands-on training that she received.
Here I am at the conclusion of this column still bewildered by higher education in our modern society. I’ve tried to avoid being wishy-washy and recognize that a humanities education is invaluable in whatever career you choose and your lifestyle options. I’ve also learned, at the real risk of seeming patronizing, that a vocational education and apprenticeship are equally necessary. And, finally, with some imagination and dissembling of higher education silos, liberal arts and vocational training can live together.
My quandary continues. My thinking, however, is a bit less muddled.
Columnist Howard Freedlander retired in 2011 as Deputy State Treasurer of the State of Maryland. Previously, he was the executive officer of the Maryland National Guard. He also served as community editor for Chesapeake Publishing, lastly at the Queen Anne’s Record-Observer. In retirement, Howard serves on the boards of several non-profits on the Eastern Shore, Annapolis and Philadelphia.
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Barbara Viniar says
Perhaps framing this as education vs. training contributes to the “muddle.” I think it sets up a false dichotomy. Chesapeake’s career programs all include general education, but who is to say that only the liberal arts generate critical thinking skills? Our nursing students learn them in their literature classes AND in the simulation labs. Many of our students have life experiences that make classroom learning even richer for them and for their classmates. They learned their critical thinking skills in the workplace, through volunteerism and in family situations. Perhaps it is better to think of education and training as complementary or sequential – with no defined order, and certainly without an end. Just ask all the participants in adult learning institutes – people who have been “trained”and “educated” numerous times in their lives, sometimes out of need and sometimes by choice.
I have been part of this conversation for 40 years, Howard, so I don’t expect we will arrive at easy answers now.