Chafin, Tyler. (2009). Education Evolves Naturally

During undergraduate students’ educational careers, there comes a time when they must determine a course of study. There are many factors that influence students’ decisions, such as socioeconomic background, probability of success, and the expected earnings and job security after graduation. “Money makes the world go ‘round” as the saying goes, so people go where they believe the money will be. Most people who aspire to become doctors are doing it for the money, no matter how passionately they babble about “helping people.” That’s nonsense; not very many people are willing to go to school for twelve years just so they can help people, but when you throw in the possibility of six-digit incomes now the applicants come rolling in.

Expected salary and certainty of job availability are probably the leading contributors to a student’s choice when declaring a major. Orazem and Mattila (1986) showed with their study on the occupational choices of high school graduates that the probability of a graduate choosing one occupation over another varies directly with the return in capital. Also, it can be assumed that the probability of success has an impact on students’ choices of major as well, as it is necessary to complete a degree in order to achieve the associated earnings.

It is true that not much has changed in the methods of practice in higher education for the past many years, and on this topic Glenn and Fischer (2009) asked “ Is that constancy a sign of health or a sign of stagnation?” I agree with the former. Perhaps the reason why nothing has changed is because it works. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is another old saying and I believe it holds true in this instance. It is the nature of things to develop themselves over time, as Darwin explained with his theory of evolution. When an organism has no need of change, it doesn’t. Many examples of this can be found in nature. If our system of majors has not evolved much, than we can assume that it has no need to. According to the U.S. Department of Education, the top ten fields of study in Baccalaureate institutions in 1997 were as follows: Business, Social Sciences, Education, Health Professions, Psychology, Visual and Performing Arts, Engineering, Communications, Biological Sciences, and English Language and Literature. Their research also shows that these subjects held approximately the same ranks and percent of total undergraduate degrees conferred in 2007. This consistency can be attributed to the fact that it must be worth four years of time and thousands of dollars to attain such a degree. I don’t believe people would continue to study these fields if it had no desired outcome nor yielded a profit, as college is first and foremost an investment. A university is a service industry, with its purpose being to provide students with the skills necessary to compete in the job market.

In his “The End of the University as We Know it,” Dr. Taylor proposed turning our universities into controlled machines geared towards “solving vexing problems” and bending itself to the needs of society. He proposes that a degree in a problem area such as “Water” would be a good idea, but what happens when the problem is solved? What happens when our factory produces enough “Water” majors that one of them fulfills all of our watery needs? What then do all of these people do for work? Also, such a degree plan has just as much potential for overpopulating the field and producing graduates for non-existent jobs as does a degree in Spanish Literature. And if we expend all of our efforts on saving things, what happens to learning just for the sake of it? Taylor also said “ The emphasis on narrow scholarship also encourages an educational system that has become a process of cloning.” I also disagree with this statement, scholarship builds upon itself. A professor that “cultivates” a student of similar interests a future professor or professional who has the potential to in turn develop the field in which he studies in his own way. Such was the discovery of DNA for example. What started as a pea garden by a Moravian monk became the double helix model of Watson and Crick, and has come much further since.

Our system of education has come a long way from its origins, evolving at its own pace, and will reach a natural equilibrium with any problems that might arise. No meddling necessary.