The Value of a College Education Essay examples -- Value of Education

Introduction The main focus of the essay is on the meaning of an education. It’s stated that a real education consists of more than just training in the specifics of one’s chosen field. It cites lateral thinking and communication skills as the valuable life skills that should be learned. It then proceeds to examine the need for these skills in the real world and the need for these skills to be taught at university level. It starts by examining the general case of all students arriving in college for the first time and by the end gets to the particular needs of computer science students and others in the more practical disciplines. It examines the causes that made this course relevant, mentioning why these skills haven’t been learned already and why at a university level they aren’t still taught implicitly by college life. It shows how and why college believes the teaching of these skills to be a necessary part of a university education What is the nature of a university education? Are we here to graduate with distinctions, get jobs in our chosen field and continue to think like computer scientists, lawyers, doctors, physicists or historians? Or as many would argue are we here to learn a little about the real world without being exposed to its harsher realities? Computers and Society is a course that annoys a lot of students; they deem it irrelevant and would rather be sitting bathed in the glow of a monitor than listening to the lecturer. Why then is a similar course taught in most degree level computer courses? Somebody seems to believe we need a broader education. Why teach a computer scientist to think and talk? First the question of education. How can one define it? It’s either a broad concept whe... ...read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading," as G. M. Trevelyan put it. Since education is fast becoming a matter of churning out graduates competent in their fields with good job prospects and little else, the module is relevant. Bibliography: [TCD student’s union] University Record, Issue One, Volume Two http://www.tcd.ie/Student/Union/News/news.htm [Robert W. Lawler] Learning and Computing: A Work in Process http://datacase.mdn.com/LC.html [Jake Werner] Thoughts on education http://pubweb.acns.nwu.edu/~jww990/essays.html [Mikhail Bakunin] Bakunin on Education (Essay 1 and Essay 2) http://spunk.etext.org/texts/writers/bakunin/ [Penny McCall Howard] The Dalhousie Faculty Strike: A strikingly liberatory education http://www.tao.ca/~dasn/issue2/dal.html Quotes about Education http://rhf.bradley.edu/~cmacas/edu.htm