Monday, December 12, 2011

How college should be subsidized

My experience on a committee to review general education has taught me one thing: instead of giving government subsidies to the university, it should be given directly to students in the form of vouchers.

Otherwise, when designing general education, we will ask what we know and what we like, and wish the student to follow our footsteps. If I am a math professor, students should learn to "purify their soul by studying Euclidean geometry" (actual statement). If I study ethics, students should take more ethics courses.

In the beginning (long, long time ago) university classes depended almost exclusively on what the students wanted to learn. After 12 years of school, students have probably earned that opportunity.