Steve Talbott
Steve Talbott:
Why should I pay a school $160,000 for a vocational education when I can almost certainly find a business or agency or laboratory or nonprofit organization willing to hire me for nothing, assign me some useful chores, and give me an opportunity to start learning my desired vocation?
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The purpose of education, at least in the liberal arts and in the sciences, is not vocation, vocation comes later, you are not prepared for some vocations without an education in the liberal arts and sciences. Oh you can do the job, but you won’t be able to go as far in the job as quickly, and you will have much fewer faculties and tools to adapt to changes in the jobs, to understand what the real job is, beyond the performance of work. we need to be careful here, because there are to few vocations left.
2 comments
Talbott’s point was that most education at this time is, in fact, vocational training. You can also reference, “Academic Freedom In The Age of the University” by Metzger, circa 1975. Similar things keep coming back, and this point is one of them.
Most education, at least higher education, is misconstrued as vocational training. The fact that it’s required as a base prerequisite for many jobs doesn’t make it vocational training, not by a long shot.