Wow. This episode brought up SO much I want to speak to...
First, college is not a vocational degree. That's a Baby Boomer paradigm we've inherited after the GI's that came back from WWII and then went to school on the GI Bill. English doesn't prepare you to get a job. Philosophy doesn't either. Nor History, nor Political Science, nor Communication Studies, or Gender or Women's Studies, or any Foreign Language, nor Psychology or Music... Not even the Sciences or Business in most ways--they don't lead directly to jobs but internships if you're lucky. None of those fields are directly vocational prep. So, in a way, it's not surprising that Art in Higher Education doesn't deal with business, networking, or anything about the actual career of being an artist. It's not supposed to. It's supposed to expose you to concepts, facilitate practice opportunities, and teach you a way of thinking. How you apply that information MUST be left up to you, as so many things can be done with it. No one needs a degree in English to be a professional writer, nor a foreign language to work abroad, nor a background in political science to be a politician. No one needs a theatre degree to be an actor. So what's a degree for? Every student has to answer that question for themselves.
That's why fundamentals classes are so broad. It's up to the student to make them relevant for themselves. They must ask themselves, "What am I getting out of this that is useful? How can I apply this information? I paid good money for this class--how do I make it worth it? Do I know enough about my future and what I need to learn to determine if this class is actually irrelevant to me, or do I just think it is?" Because getting an education isn't about pouring information into one's brain like tea into a teacup.
I deal with this every day as a part-time benefits-based adjunct instructor teaching theatrical costuming, as parents want a return on investment for the opportunity to get a degree that they're paying for. Education is not a commodity. They're not paying for a degree. They're paying for an opportunity to get one within the curriculum provided. It's not a vending machine that you pop your quarters into and out comes a fancy piece of paper. It's a structure. That's it. And that structure varies from institution to institution.
Secondly, I have to beg to differ about the quality of Adjunct instructors. My fellow adjunct colleagues are not post-professional expert volunteers, they're working at 2 or 3 different institutions simultaneously to make ends meet as well as balancing professional commitments outside of education. They're professional practitioners and professional teachers.
But new faculty members being left to flail in the wind without any mentoring or guidance or perspective regarding how their class is relevant to the department's curriculum AND the futures of the students is more and more common. Hire a plug-and-play instructor and that's what you'll get. Faculties are obligated to help instructors learn to teach, and they're not doing it.
Which brings up my third point: Why can't anyone remember that there are no required credentials for teaching higher education? Unlike high school, which demands certifications and continual re-education on a strict timeline, Higher Ed assumes that if you're a successful professional you should naturally be able to teach your field of choice and all the fundamentals important to achievement in that field. I'm amazed and stupefied that people don't know that. This is why I embraced SVSLearn and dropped my subscription to Schoolism. You all are teachers. Your professional success is great, but that doesn't qualify you to know how to share the information you've learned. You garnered that through actual teaching experience.
That being said, In 1870 there were 9,400 Bachelor of Arts degrees awarded in the US, no Masters degrees, and 1 Doctorate. In 2009, there were 1,600,000 BAs awarded, 657,000 MAs awarded, and 67,000 Doctorates. (That's not even counting specific degrees like BFAs or BSEs or Associates degrees earned at community colleges.)
In 1900, there were less than 1,000 colleges and universities in the United States. By 2015, the Washington Post counted 5300.
Where do we think all those schools and degree programs get their teachers? Did we suddenly get a landslide of professional practitioners who are also good teachers, all within three or four generations? Of course not. So is it any wonder the quality of an education has declined?
Lastly, I have to say that it is surprising how many students abnegate their own responsibilities in their own education. Will has talked about this before--how students complain about homework hoops they have to jump through, never understanding they're paying for the opportunity to do that very homework. We come from a no-child-left-behind culture where we learn only to answer the questions on a test, take dictation on our laptops instead of actually listening to lectures & taking notes that require mental attention and summarization, and have become inseparable in classrooms from the dopamine delivered by phone texts and social media posts. I can't be responsible for a student's lack of desire to be a diligent partner in their own education. I can only set them up to learn how to educate themselves when they finally decide they're ready.
As Higher Ed teachers we do have a responsibility to justify our content to our students. It's those that aren't doing that very well that end up with students who wonder why they took those classes in the first place. It may not be the content that's wrong, but the capacity of teachers to teach it well and make it relevant.