Are we too specialized?

I've written here before about my opinion that our societal trend toward immobility (not just geographically speaking, but across different industries and job functions as well) has been a significant contributing factor to our persistently high unemployment rate. Lawyers are incapable of turning themselves into factory workers, bankers don't have the skills necessary to become I.T. professionals, and the result is a persistent mismatch of job seekers and job opportunities--and, in turn, greater shipping of jobs overseas.

Along those lines, former Congresswoman Heather Wilson wrote a provocative op-ed for The Washington Post this weekend, wondering aloud whether our students (and thereby, our society) had become overly specialized.

For most of the past 20 years I have served on selection committees for the Rhodes Scholarship. In general, the experience is an annual reminder of the tremendous promise of America's next generation. We interview the best graduates of U.S. universities for one of the most prestigious honors that can be bestowed on young scholars.

I have, however, become increasingly concerned in recent years - not about the talent of the applicants but about the education American universities are providing. Even from America's great liberal arts colleges, transcripts reflect an undergraduate specialization that would have been unthinkably narrow just a generation ago.

As a result, high-achieving students seem less able to grapple with issues that require them to think across disciplines or reflect on difficult questions about what matters and why....

An outstanding biochemistry major wants to be a doctor and supports the president's health-care bill but doesn't really know why. A student who started a chapter of Global Zero at his university hasn't really thought about whether a world in which great powers have divested themselves of nuclear weapons would be more stable or less so, or whether nuclear deterrence can ever be moral. A young service academy cadet who is likely to be serving in a war zone within the year believes there are things worth dying for but doesn't seem to have thought much about what is worth killing for. A student who wants to study comparative government doesn't seem to know much about the important features and limitations of America's Constitution.

I wish I could say that this is a single, anomalous group of students, but the trend is unmistakable. Our great universities seem to have redefined what it means to be an exceptional student. They are producing top students who have given very little thought to matters beyond their impressive grasp of an intense area of study.

This narrowing has resulted in a curiously unprepared and superficial pre-professionalism.

One of the first things to come to mind as I was reading Ms. Wilson's op-ed was my own post from months back on the questionable future of the liberal arts education. With tuition rates skyrocketing across the country, it's irrational and impossible for a student to choose to attend a college without first thinking of his job prospects upon graduation. In that kind of an environment, those schools that best align with what large employers are looking for can typically expect to receive the best students. The logical endgame is that the companies--not the school administrators or the faculty or the students themselves--are the ones ultimately calling the shots as far as curriculum and academic focus. That's backwards.

The problem as I see it is not "overspecialization" per se, but the age at which we are now specializing. By the time most students arrive at their college of choice, they have likely already been funneled down a very specific path--the "superficial pre-professionalism" that Ms. Wilson refers to. Once upon a time, both high school and undergraduate college programs focused on providing a solid grounding in the basics; specialization was left to the companies and the graduate school programs, which is mostly (in my opinion) where it belonged. The earlier we have begun to specialize, the less nimble and adaptable we have become--that's a significant problem in a world that can change as rapidly as our technological world can and does.

Our nation's top universities must not allow themselves to turn into mere training grounds for our largest corporations. They must maintain their focus on producing well-rounded graduates who can make our country and the world a better place--not just those who can make their companies more profitable. Unfortunately, maintaining that focus is not always good business for the school itself, nor does doing so justify the ever-increasing tuition and fees that they charge. The question for our universities is whether or not they can resist the temptation of catering to the corporate whim. So far, it's not looking too good.

[Washington Post]