A continuing theme

Last week there was a renewal of a debate that is always present when thinking about higher education.   This time it was between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.  But seventy years ago it was between a Mexican government official and a Mexican scholar.


The debate is about what purpose should higher education serve.   The focus is how much should the state's needs be a goal for higher education.   Antonio Caso and his opponent argued about it.  His opponent suggested that all of higher education should be an instrument of state policy.  If the government was socialist then the institutions should teach socialist principles.  Caso argued that was nonsense - higher education should attempt to discover knowledge and expand human capacities.


Gate's remarks to the National Governor's Association were a bit less expansive than Caso's opponent but they landed on the need to tie goals in higher education to state goals.  Gates commented "The amount of subsidization is not that well-correlated to the areas that actually create jobs in the state -- that create income for the state.  Now, in the past it felt fine to just say, 'OK, we’re over all going to be generous with this sector,' ” he continued. “But in this era, to break down and really say, ‘What are the categories that help fill jobs and drive that state economy in the future?’ -- you’ll find that it’s not across the board in terms of everything that the state subsidizes in higher education.”


When Jobs participated in the announcement of the iPad2 he offered a much broader theme, which mirrors his commencement remarks at Stanford in 2005. (The link to the video is presented in the link.)   In that address he described three opportunities he had in life where things took a wrong turn and yet he benefitted from the event.  In the announcement about the new iPad he commented that Apple's DNA required " technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing and nowhere is that more true than in these post-PC devices"


Ultimately, from my perspective, higher education needs to pay attention to what is important in society - it needs to be cognizant that its graduates must become employed.  At the same time if its graduates are simply tools of their professions then both the graduates and society are made poorer.