I’ve been thinking and writing about the jobs of the future in this blog first as an exercise in fantasy. Then when I read our local daily paper on Saturday morning, the the Valencia County News-Bulletin, I realize that fantasy and that post are materializing into fact. Case and point Brad Cordova, graduate of Belen High School class of 2007. After recently completing a degree in math and physics from the University of Notre Dame, he is on his way to MIT to study more advance topics in optics and quantum computational theory. He is preparing for the jobs of the future and let us all hope for the sake of technological progress forward that more follow in his foot steps. Besides all of us here in the county being extremely proud that a native is actually studying such advances topics, this got me to thinking. Is academia, as structured today, preparing the multi-disciplinary programs necessary to train our quantum information scientist, synthetic biologist, data scientist or cyber security engineers?
All institutions of higher learner boast about their multi-disciplinary prowess. However, short of doctoral students and multi-disciplinary fellowship programs for graduate level students, where are the programs that instill this multi-disciplinary approach to undergrads? Not courses in art history, philosophy and international studies (I frankly found those interesting, but a waste of my tuition assistance). Are we developing course that not only introduce these concepts for the sake of general core curriculum degree satisfaction, but how a math course and a computer course interact? In my previous post I posited that a lot of disciplines must be master for the application farther into the academic training. Just take data scientists. A computer science background with a strong core in math and statistics plus some background in graphic design. Currently most of these skills are acquired during a career not in academia. What if we change the paradigm? Start our future graduates in these fields from higher level of excellence. We give colleges a pass on this because they don’t want the moniker of vocational or trade schools. Today most of the institutions that cater to supplying technical training with real-world application are private or public community colleges and trade schools. Big universities seem to find these endeavors beneath them. University was meant for scholarship and knowledge pursuits. However, universities have long morph into vocational or trade training grounds because so many employers view a degree as certification to hire. Without it job applicants have to hope for the best.
We can debate about the merits of using degrees as job discriminators in another post, but now that is the reality. Most jobs require a multi-disciplinary mindset and approach when it comes to finger tip knowledge. In fairness to the universities we can’t expect them to train every individual for all possible contingencies. I’m saying that fact isn’t formally stressed to newly credentialed graduates as they enter the work force. I for one was lucky and knew this ahead of time. I am one part programmer, RF engineer, contracts administrator, orbital analysis and technical writer in my daily duties. None of these things I am an expert on, but had to learn just enough to be productive. My decade in the Air Force prepared me for that, not the eventual college education. But that has to change particularly in the careers I’ve been writing about over the past month. We should begin to demand more of institutions (and industry) for the price society is increasingly having to pay. Slowly society is starting to ask is education really worth the cost? They are asking for ROI on something that’s just as expensive as buying a house or saving for retirement. I won’t figure it out in this post, but something to think about going forward is how do we do go about this? I don’t know, but we need to seriously start thinking about it soon.