Education and Training

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Thinking Lateral
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Australia's biggest businesses are worried about university education: it does not provide enough training in creativity, initiative, oral communication and problem solving. Without these, graduates are not ready to start work... (The West, 15 March, page 47) An interesting perspective. Universites blame lack of funding -- government and industry should invest more in training. Are we talking about the same thing here? Way back when I was a tertiary level student (for the first time) there were two sources of training for computer programmers. One was the University of WA, providing courses in "computer science". The other was the WA Institute of Technology (soon to rename itself as Curtin University) providing courses in "information processing". It was said at the time that there was a basic difference between graduates from UWA and those from WAIT: UWA graduates would not be ready to work. They would graduate with no practical skills. But they would have such a sound basis of understanding that they would very soon learn the ropes and become valuable employees. WAIT graduates would be immediately ready for work. They would know programming and be ready to write programs. But they lacked the depth of understanding that would allow them to grow. So you hired a graduate from UWA if you wanted an employee who would be valuable in the long term. You hired a graduate from WAIT if you wanted a quick fix. The WAIT graduate would provide immediate value. The UWA graduate would provide more long term value. UWA students were getting an education; they would use that education as a basis for learning, improving, getting better at their jobs. WAIT students were being trained; they would use their training to do their jobs. If the jobs changed, WAIT students would require further training. We still have that division: training provides work-ready graduates, education provides graduates with an ability to grow and improve. Industry seems to want graduates to have been trained... why is that? Employees are cogs in the machine of industry. If you change the machine, you need to change the cogs. Is it easier to rebuild the existing cogs -- to retrain existing employees -- or to buy new cogs? In the short term it is easier to buy -- to get rid of existing employees and to replace them with cogs... sorry, employees, who are already trained into the new work. And with pressure on industry to perform -- to be profitable here and now -- the short term is all that matters.

Here's a thought

Should we "educate" or "train"? We need both... somewhere there must be work-related training, somewhere there must be education for the longer-term needs of employers. Each university -- each university course -- needs to be clear: are we training or educating? There may be a mix but one or the other should be the main purpose of the course. Do we intend to train students so that they will be immediately able to work productively? Or will we provide a broad education so that they will be valuable, long term employees. State the objectives up front, define the course and its units to suit. Know what you intend to do -- then do it according to your intentions.

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Independent Thinking
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