How higher education devalues ​​expert knowledge

Why the increase in the number of universities, easy access to higher education and the belief that every person must have a diploma destroy the value of knowledge – in a chapter from the book “The Death of Expertise”

The Internet has given people access to information and valuable knowledge in all areas. But in practice, people did not become more educated – as a result, many began to consider themselves knowledgeable in everything and imagine themselves to be experts, possessing only superficial data. This situation leads to the spread of misconceptions and false information, devaluing real expert knowledge. But the Internet is not the main source of difficulties that expertise is now experiencing. Paradoxically, the problem of knowledge depreciation is exacerbated by the modern education system.

The more universities there are, the more non-professionals and pseudo-experts appear. The wide availability of higher education – paradoxically – makes many people think that they have become smarter, when in fact they have acquired only illusory knowledge, backed up by a diploma from dubious universities. The transformation of education into a business leads to the fact that the administration and teachers of many universities and colleges are trying to please students in everything, without requiring diligence and real knowledge from them. In his book, Harvard School professor Tom Nichols writes about the American education system, but many of its problems are also characteristic of our country.

Higher education: the customer is always right

seven magical years

It is believed that higher education should cure us of the false belief that every person is as smart as anyone else. Unfortunately, in the twenty-first century, college enrollment is having the exact opposite effect: a large number of people who have attended college or a similar educational institution consider themselves to be no less educated people than the most experienced and knowledgeable scientists and experts. Years spent in college are now no longer a time dedicated to study and personal growth. The massive influx of young Americans who want to go to college, and the subsequent competition of schools for their money, has created an experience of learning as a “seller-buyer” situation, where students learn – among other things – that the client is always right.

Before World War II, most people did not graduate from high school and few went to college. In those days, it was predominantly children from privileged families who entered elite schools. However, sometimes young people and a very small number of girls managed to scrape together money to pay for tuition, or even get a scholarship. Higher education was an exception to the rule, determined either by social status or personal merit. Still, going to college was a testament to potential, and graduating from college was proof of certain accomplishments. A degree was rare and served as one of the insignia to help separate experts and knowledgeable people from the rest of the public.

Today, higher education has become a mass phenomenon. As a result of this increased access to higher education, the very word “college” loses its meaning, at least as far as being able to define an educated person. The phrase “college graduate” today can mean a lot. But, unfortunately, the phrase “a person with a certain educational level” is not always one of these meanings.

And yet the situation is such that most higher education institutions in America are not able to provide their students with the basic knowledge and skills that form the basis of expert knowledge. But more importantly, they fail to teach the ability to recognize expert knowledge and collaborate productively with experts and other professionals. The most important of these intellectual skills, and one of the most attacked in American universities, is critical thinking—the ability to explore new information and alternative ideas dispassionately, logically, and without emotional or personal judgment.

This is because studying at a higher education institution no longer guarantees quality education. Today, colleges and universities provide a standard process for what is known as “college education.” But it does not even remotely resemble the previous experience. And graduates now believe they know much more than they actually do. Nowadays, when an expert says, “Well, I went to college,” the public responds reasonably, “Who didn’t go to college?” Today, Americans who have graduated from colleges consider themselves quite “educated,” but in reality, the most that most of them can say is that they continued their education with varying degrees of success in some educational institutions trying to reach the standard of higher education.

The influx of students into American institutions of higher education is increasingly turning the learning process into a commodity. Today, in most educational institutions, students are treated as customers, not as students. Young people who have just graduated from college are sought to please both financially and intellectually, reinforcing some of the negative qualities in those students who have not yet learned self-discipline – something that was once extremely important. These days, colleges are being sold like annual tour packages, instead of making young people think of admission as a contract with the institute and its faculty for a specific course of study. This marketing of college as a product not only detracts from the value of diplomas and degrees, but also undermines ordinary Americans’ belief that college means anything.

This is a deeper issue than the traditional antics, hobbies, and intellectual follies of the campuses that get public attention from time to time. Campus life has always been this stupid, and it always will be. As Tufts University professor Dan Dresner wrote, “One of the goals of the college is to make it possible to use stupid arguments in a stupid way, and then, through interaction with fellow students and professors, find out how stupid they are.” College life, especially in most elite schools, is isolated from society, and when young people and intellectuals are cut off from the real world, strange things can happen.

It happens that studying becomes just an expensive waste of time, albeit harmless in itself. For example, parents of Brown University students spend serious money getting their kids to participate in events like Campus Nudism Week. (One attendee at such an event in 2013 said the “negative reviews” of the event “helped her prepare for life after college.” (Well, let’s hope.) students on the streets of Providence My college anxieties have to do with what happens—or doesn’t happen—in the classroom.

At a minimum, colleges should aim to produce people who are adequately trained in a particular discipline, with a desire to continue learning for the rest of their lives, and the ability to be active citizens. Instead, for most people, college has become, in the words of an alumnus of a prominent California school, “the magical seven years between university and the first unskilled job.” College has ceased to be a transition to educated adulthood, it is now just a tactic to delay coming adulthood.

Part of the problem is that there are now too many students, a fair proportion of whom are simply not studying. The new culture of education in the United States is that everyone must go to college. These cultural changes are important to the death of expertise, because as curricula grow in response to consumer demands, schools become pseudo-universities whose diplomas are more about preparation than teaching, two very different concepts that are increasingly merged in the public consciousness. In the worst case, diplomas do not confirm either education or training, but only attendance. And sometimes they even testify only to the timely payment of tuition fees.

This is one of those problems that professors prefer not to talk about in polite society, but it exists. Young people who could have a successful career in sales apply to college without even thinking about how they will study or what they will do when they graduate. Four years turn into five, six or more. The limited course of study ends up becoming repetitive visits to an expensive educational smorgasbord loaded with food that is predominantly intellectual trash. And it is almost impossible to see any of the teachers providing supervision that students choose nutritious things, and not just nonsense.

At the most competitive and elite colleges and universities, there is less cause for concern in this regard, as they can choose the applicants they want and fill the emerging streams with generally brilliant students. Their students will receive a full education, and subsequently be able to find a well-paid job. Other educational institutions will be at the end of the list. Eventually all these kids will go to some college, and those schools that fail intellectually will compete with each other over who has the best pizza in the food court or more luxurious dorm rooms or more variety of events.

Currently, there is not only too many students, but also a huge number of professors. The very best national universities, the traditional sources of faculty, mindlessly produce PhDs at a rate far exceeding the needs of any academic market. Less reputable schools that don’t award degrees—many of them aren’t even listed at the undergraduate level—offer doctorates of such low quality that they would never hire their graduates themselves. Crowds of unemployed PhDs, laden with mediocre dissertations on a huge number of abstruse topics, roam the academic landscape, literally wanting to earn their living.

Even the term “professor” has lost its true meaning. Once a rare title, now American higher education institutions use it as they please. Now, anyone who teaches anything above the high school level is considered a professor, from the head of a top faculty at a large research university to a multi-hour instructor at a small-town college. And just as every teacher is now a “professor”, every smallest college is now a “university” – a phenomenon that has now reached monstrous proportions. Tiny schools that once catered to locals are now suddenly “universities” as if they had a collider in their backyard.

These fake universities are partly to blame for the insatiable craving for degrees in a culture where everyone thinks they should go to college. And this, in turn, gave rise to a destructive downward curve of trust in diplomas and degrees. Schools and colleges create this “degree inflation” in the same way that governments create money inflation: by printing more paper. Once upon a time, a high school diploma was a necessary condition in order to engage in some kind of craft or enter a certain profession. But now everyone has it, even those who cannot read. As a consequence, colleges now serve to certify graduation from high school, and a master’s degree meets the requirements that were once required of a candidate for a bachelor’s degree. Students, like squirrels, spin this training drum without gaining any serious knowledge.

Finding a solution to this problem is a key issue for the future of American education. In 2016, Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders said that today a college degree is the equivalent of a fifty-year-old high school diploma. And that therefore every person should go to college, just like every person goes to high school now. In fact, the fact that we treat colleges like revamped high schools explains a lot why we’re in such a crisis. More broadly, the result of too many “students”, “professors”, “universities” and advanced degrees is that going to college is currently no guarantee that people know what they are talking about.