Competence

DePaul uses a competence based system for determining graduate requirements. I'm not sure that I can explain it over a blog post, but I found this a bit interesting:

Medieval master craftsmen taught not only technical skill, but also problem solving, standards of quality, and good citizenship. We can regard today's college education as a means of achieving competence in the work world, in the community, and in general -- that is, a knowledge of the arts and sciences.

This is, in part, what I view as the arrogance of academia. In my experience, college grads spend the first year of life in the "real world" unlearning what college taught them, or having it beat out of them by their coworkers and supervisors.

I honestly don't think that most academics have a clue about how the rest of the world really operates. If it wasn't for that piece of paper I don't think I could tolerate this.

Tags: school, liberal learning