Skills versus Knowledge

It is a truth universally acknowledged that people go to university to learn things.  And these things are difficult things you could only learn from being at a university.  Was this ever true?  The trouble with this viewpoint is that it is just that: a point of view.  No that a viewpoint is of no use.  If I stand on a viewpoint, such as on a hill, I can see far and understand better where I stand.

But, the view that a university is about imparting and gaining knowledge depends on much more than such a simple statement ay mean at face value.  Don't get me wrong.  I am not a dumb-downer, even if I have always taught at 1990's universities with less academically qualified students than I learned with at top-flight unis.  So, do my students learn less than I did?

Not - I know this sounds dumb - less quantitatively.  Stay with me on this.  In four years of study you learn four years of stuff.  Its the same amount of stuff at whatever uni.  Sorry, I can't be clearer than that as Computing Science stuff doesn't easily translate into Philosophy or Medicine stuff.  

Is the stuff qualitatively different: deeper, harder, broader, etc.?  Yes, of course it is.  Medicine is harder than Engineering which is harder than Computing Science which is harder than History.  Just check the diaries of students of each subject for the balance of classes, studying and partying. 

But, have we been making subjects ever easier down the years.  In some ways, again, yes.  Back in their college days the new yoonis taught 30 weeks a year and students were in classes 25 hours a week.  Now they are in classes for max 24 weeks a year and spend mebbes 15 hours a week in classes.  Do the sums: was=750hours, is=360.  

But, is less time in class less knowledge?  In some ways, again, yes.  If I lecture a class for 3 hours a week I can say far more than if I just do so, as I do, for 1 hour a week.  But, is more less?  Again, sometimes the answer is yes.  The fact that a lecturer can yabber on for hours doesn't mean the content is good; a kinda 3kg for the price of 1kg educational bargain.

Yes, we have lost content.  In my subject, Computing Science, there is an endless list of what we no longer teach: compiler design, stacks & heaps, machine code, procedural design, algorithms, etc.  Some of that we'd just love to teach but can't.  Why can't?  Because pressures on teaching cause effects on teaching.

These pressures are multifold: industrial requirements, student expectations, university equipment, textbook contents, personal knowledge, etc.  Courses change as the times around them change.  No man, as Donne put it, is an island.  And, to mix the metaphors, the ivory towers of academe don't exist on an island any more either, funding, staffing, administrivia, etc. all impose upon our teaching.

So, we change our course contents.  Computing Science, if it is to produce programmers, becomes more Applied Computing than CS.  Students learn less about the fundamentals, but still graduate as competent programmers (we hope.)  It's not just us, at St Andrews they teach Latin to 1st year students who have no school qualifications in the subject and those who do.  Those who do must learn more stuff than those running to catch up with them.  The 4-year bucket is only so big.

These days it is skills over knowledge, I admit.  But, this is not say it is poor for the graduate.  Time may tell, but perhaps even time won't tell as so much is so hard to tell, and the telling is often pointlessly historicist or biased.

What I do know is that we must produce graduates who know and can do at the same time.  Knowing is not enough any more by the greater measure of graduate usefuleness the world outside acadaemia is currently using.  He who pays the piper calls the tune.  I don't mind as long as the tune is good, and, IMHO, the useful graduate is a good, if different tune, from the merely knowledgeable graduate.