Can We Rethink Our Constant Emphasis On University Education

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I have been teaching for almost as long as I have been a journalist. When I first started lecturing undergraduate students, I was only slightly older than most of them. In fact, a few of my students at that time were even the same age as me. I could teach so early in my life because I had, with the support of my parents, received my post-graduate degree quite early.
One of the pranks I used to play was to sit at the back of the class on the first day and pretend to wait as if the lecturer had not arrived. I would get to hear all kinds of rumours the students were dishing out about me even though they had never met me.
“This lecturer always late ahh?”
“I hear he is very easy to suck up to for good grades!”
“They say he is very boring!”
“Apparently he is extremely good looking and some say funny too!”
Okay, fine! I made up that last comment. Once I had heard enough, I would stand up and walk to the front of the class and yell “surprise!” and they would all get the shock of their lives to see such a young lecturer. This was nearly twenty years ago and I can’t pull the prank off anymore. The grey hair that covers a quarter of my head would give me away too easily now.
I was young and didn’t have much experience as a journalist, yet I was teaching. But I was hard at work as a journalist too and I shared with my students everything that I was going through. They had an inside view of all the special reports, books, and documentaries that I was working on at that time and I screened works in progress for them to watch. I like to think that they enjoyed themselves and learned a bit too.
Reduced enrolment
I still teach on a part-time and adjunct basis and I enjoy it very much. For a very long time, education has been an industry that was seen as a guaranteed money maker. Everyone wanted to get an education and every parent wanted their children to study to the highest point as possible - the ivory towers (or ‘menara gading’) as they call it. If you were in the education line, you were secured.
However, enrolment (especially in the private education sector) is dropping fast today. Most universities and colleges are facing reduced student numbers as compared to their targets. This isn’t just happening in Malaysia. The United States, a country where people from around the world head to for tertiary education, has also seen a drop in enrolment as reported on a recent Freakonomics podcast episode.
According to the report, universities have lost around 1.5 million students in the last few years. Interestingly, men accounted for about 70 percent of this number, but that is a story for another day. What I really want to talk about is to see if the current education mode of going to university or college is still serving the purpose of preparing people for life and a career.
When I was growing up, my parents always instilled in me the importance of education, and rightfully so. Going to university was an automatic given in my family. Both my parents graduated from university, my uncles and aunties also did so and so did all of my cousins. But my parents never forced me or my siblings to study any particular field, but university was important.
They just said that going to university is good because you surround yourself with people who want to learn, have ambition in their lives and have a certain level of commitment and dedication. Whatever course or field you study is secondary. They were definitely not wrong. I studied accountancy in my undergraduate days and I never practised it. I went straight into the media and it was fine.
Passion for discovery, learning
Today, aside from lecturing in universities, I also conduct a lot of workshops and short courses. These workshops are very specific in what the participants learn and it is usually related to a particular skill or profession. Of course, the ones I conduct are focused on journalism, filmmaking, writing and the like. Many of the participants harbour ambitions of building a career in this field.
Some of them had university degrees and some of them didn’t. Some of them had degrees that were related to the topics of the workshops and some of them didn’t. But the most important thing is that they knew what they wanted and they were passionate about it. Conducting these workshops is a joy because I would be engaging with people who were into it and took it seriously.
Let’s compare that with students at a university. I have to honestly say that a big number of these students are not as engaged as they ideally should be. Many are there because it is just expected of them to be in university. The course that they enrolled in is just something to, well, enrol in. They aren’t necessarily interested in what they learn and this is not just a challenge to lecturers who are teaching, but it also affects the overall quality of the subject, course and overall university.
I am not saying that all university students are like that. There are many who are also very passionate and engaged, but these students just do not make up the majority. Sure, the university is also supposed to be a place where these young students discover themselves and their passion. So they might not know what they actually like yet and here is the time to discover it (somewhat like me when I was in university).
However, they need to have the passion of wanting to discover. They need to have a zeal to learn and explore, which I do not see in that first group that I had described a few paragraphs earlier. So maybe, a university environment might not be the right environment for them and they need to be given the opportunity elsewhere. But for them to be given that opportunity, there need to be viable and visible alternatives.
Diversity in opportunity
Too much emphasis is put on youth to “climb the ivory towers”, but maybe the towers that are made available shouldn’t just be made out of ivory. The objective of universities hundreds of years ago was for people to learn a skill or trade. It was as simple as that. Of course, over time, universities became more than that. It also became a centre for research and to advance human civilisation.
But, just as how universities have changed and evolved, so have people and their ability to advance and progress. I am not saying universities are no longer important. Far from it. I clearly received many benefits from a university education. It was clearly the right path for me. All I am saying here is that we need to have diversity in how people can get an education and progress.
There are other factors too. Universities are expensive, time-consuming (four to five years for an undergraduate degree is a long time if you think about it) and probably too separate from their original intention. Maybe our education options need to also include a bit of practicality, innovation, and entrepreneurship rather than just being traditionally academic. - Mkini
ZAN AZLEE is a writer, documentary filmmaker, journalist and academic. He had waited so long for a change in the system and he is not willing to settle for a half-past-six change. And then the Sheraton Move happened. Visit fatbidin.com to view his work.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.

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