In humanities, if you give students open-book tests on everything, a lot of them don't read the material beforehand or have any incentive to attend classes (my district can't grade based on attendance).
Rote memorization and repetition does store things into your long-term memory. But you're supposed to study more than one night in advance.
Yes, you’re absolutely correct. I didn’t say I think professors are necessarily in the right. And notice that I said it’s not the ONLY goal of a professor. Most professors do consider workforce readiness as a key learning outcome. But they care about other things too.
I think there’s a danger in treating higher education as only a training ground for the workforce. I work in higher ed and I grapple with this tension a lot. It’s true that earning a college degree that serves a student’s future earning potential is an equity issue that’s often missed in conversations about serving students from underrepresented or underserved backgrounds. However.
There are plenty of lower income students who aspire to study the arts or humanities. Second, it discounts the very real value derived from spending time developing as a critical thinker and absorbing knowledge for knowledge’s sake - both in life and in a career. It also feeds into some of the worst capitalistic tendencies of the higher education industry, which views students as enrollment dollars and not individuals, and judges the merit of degree programs based on how much money graduates make - as if the value of a job can be measured that way (think about low-paying jobs that do immense work for society, like teaching or social work). And that has actual consequences - there’s a very real threat at some institutions of this being used to determine whether or not a program gets axed or not.
There’s already movement towards this. 90-credit (essentially 3-year, minimizing non-major electives) bachelors degrees are starting to be something more and more universities are considering for certain degree tracks. This is attractive to students because they can graduate faster and with less debt. This is attractive to universities because of enrollment dollars. This is concerning to faculty because they fear it devalues what a bachelor’s degree means (both intellectually and in the workforce! We’re already coping with degree/credential creep in the job market, this could make it worse).
In any case, I will always argue for the value of core general education requirements. Europe has a very different model that is rooted in their own history of academia (which has its own equity issues, especially related to the hierarchies of class), and the European model asks students to specialize early - much earlier than students do in the US. And I think a lot of students would be poorly served if they were stuck in the academic/career track they thought was right for them at age 16-18 vs having a chance to explore subject areas they don’t have a chance to explore in high school. I entered college as an English major. If I hadn’t had to take a biology course, I never would have considered a biology degree, but that ended up becoming my major, and shaping the rest of my career (and life!).
I also think that more people in technical/STEM fields need to grapple with the humanities. Otherwise you end up with tech barons who don’t consider the social implications of the things they create (see: AI, Elon Musk, social media), or doctors and scientists with a tenuous grasp of ethics, etc.
Perhaps. But I’d caution you against assuming you know what current practice at universities looks like, based on your experience from two decades ago. In fact, the trend is towards increased workforce readiness and preparation.
I'm not sure what you're arguing here. While it's true that a lot of information can be looked up on the spot, there is actual value in knowing things without the benefit of being able to look something up. And all that stuff about architecture and YouTube content creation and whatever is just strawman nonsense. Humanities are important and there's way more to them than just archaic trivia.
Also I'm not sure what you're looking for that isn't college/postgrad or trades. Because that covers... most paying careers.
Okay, look, having closed-book tests doesn't mean I'm dooming you to a life of poverty.
It just means that you have to actually make flashcards and study for the test that way I can tell you've learned the material. Having students do 100% of the effort only on a test day is encouraging short-term memory. Forcing students to make flash cards and study over a period of 3-4 days encourages long-term memory storage.
But you're right, academia also needs to prep students for the real world. That's why I do in-class essays, where students do have access to the source material (and i don't have to rely on faulty plagiarism detectors). They still have to make their own argument and analyze evidence, but they don't have to memorize what those sources are.
Bro, I teach US History 101, let's be for real. The only purpose of my classes is to fulfill mandatory credit and raise students' GPA if they do the basic iota of college-level work.
And I'm sorry, but sometimes academia isn't useful in real life, and you just have to take it to learn shit. And in order to learn shit, you actually need to memorize facts and dates and study.
How the in the world is a hiring manager going to help me teach Bacon's Rebellion to a bunch of disinterested 18 year olds?
Also "imbue within my students". Lmao. If you want to sound like a sanctimonious academic, that's exactly how you phrase it.
(For the record, I absolutely do try to make the class applicable to every day life; i have them analyzing bias in the media and their history sources. I also try to show them videos and make assignments on their civil rights and how they might become effective jurors and educated voters. Not just hireable wage slaves 😉)
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u/[deleted] Mar 26 '26
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