Korean Job Discussion Forums

[sojusucks]

[PRagic]

Interesting. The author is basically emphasizing a need for Economic Geography or Socio-Economics, not simply Economics, especially where sustainable development is concerned.

This has been a trend for a while among even well-recognized economists, but it's refreshing to see someone come out big on the issue. Now if we could just get them to admit that Economics should be taking a back seat to other more inclusive diciplines, if not at least sharing the car, then we'd see better models and more understanding in geo-eco-political affairs.

[NohopeSeriously]

[chachee99]

Look at what some people major in at university.

A: "What's your major?"
B: "Fashion Design"


Do you really need a university degree to do that?

It's not just Korea, it is going on in other universities too in Canada and the US. How many people have you met who have a BS degree? I won't be shocked when you see people in the future getting an undergraduate degree majoring in being a "Disc Jockey"

What's even worse is how the Master's programs at universties are being handed out like Christmas candy. People getting Master's degrees in fields with a long pointless name such as a "Masters In International Foreign Communication Technologies". Seriously, WTF is that? In my opinion, if a Master's degree has a long time title behind it, then it is probably a BS program.


But hey, some people do not understand that universities are businesses. The need to make money. If they can create a program and get people to buy into it, then all the power to them. Remember that a BA degree these days does not mean very much. Obtaining a unversity education is so stressed. A BA is becoming the new high school degree.

[Vagabundo]

[silkhighway]

[Vagabundo]

[silkhighway]

[daskalos]

Some time during that last hundred or so years, the entire purpose of higher education changed. It's entirely possible that this change came about because the totality of human knowledge has increased by several magnitudes in the modern era. It was possible, 500 years ago, for university education to give a student a firm grounding in all human knowledge. Today, four years is nowhere near enough time to ensure this.

Part of the result of all this is that higher education flailed to stay relevant, to the extent that most degrees conferred today are little more than trade school certifications. A degree conferred these days by most schools is only a statement that means a person is qualified in a very narrowly defined field, whereas it used to mean that one had a grounding in the fundamental history of life and thought throughout the ages.

Yeah, I know, to get a degree, all majors include core subjects, but just ask any random graduate these days any question that was, 100 years ago, considered a basic piece of knowledge, and you'll be pretty depressed. Twenty years ago I started asking college educated people to place Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Charlemagne into a chronological list, and even though I give the choices in chronological order, very few can do it, yet they still insist on callings themselves educated, because they are fluent in some arcane branch of knowledge that only experts need to have.

When I am King of the world, anyone who wants to say s/he's educated will have to get a liberal arts degree. From there you can go on to a specialty, or you can forego a real education and just go straight into a trade school to learn how to be an accountant or a PE teacher.

Very sadly, today's Bachelor's degree is yesterday's high school diploma, both in terms of what it gets you and its educational value. Let's not confuse education for vocational training, okay?

The reason a liberal arts degree is the only degree that can be considered to be an actual education is that it's the only degree that teaches people HOW to think. This is especially important for people who then want to go on to be scientists or mathematicians. The liberal arts, properly applied, teach critical thinking. No other discipline does, not even the sciences.

[chellovek]

[Vagabundo]

[silkhighway]

It sounds like elitist self-centred "What I learned is important and what everyone else is learning isn't important.". I'm sure google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page with their computer science backgrounds will be dissapointed when I tell them they never learned critical thinking. They must have have taken Google courses where their professors told them how to invent it. And Stephen Hawking, with his theoretical physics background must be shocked that he wasn't applying critical thinking when he wrote "A Brief History of Time".

[daskalos]

[Riker]

Well, I went to school and got a BA in Mathematics and can't understand why English or Business is even offered as a degree. They really don't require formal training.

Think of it like this. A person seeking a degree in business knows they are not going to learn anything that common sense couldn't tell them. Its highly doubtful that anything new will be learned. It is just some requirement which must be filled for reasons no one can explain. One look at the material and you almost immediately think: "people have to study this? from a book? really????"


People who study math and science generally are looking for knowledge. I studied math because they were the coolest department ( nicest professors ) at my university. But I eventually became brainwashed to believe non scientific fields are lower than dog crap, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

[Vagabundo]