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If you ever need to strike up a conversation with a group of academics, a surefire way to get them talking is to ask about their graduate training. Where did they train, in what methods, in which lab, under what mentor? People will speak with great pride about their training as an economist, historian, chemist, philosopher, or classicist. If, on the other hand, you need to make a quick exit, try sharing the opinion that undergraduate education should include a lot more vocational training. You'll soon find yourself standing alone or responding to accusations of classism and questions about your commitment to social and racial equality. You might even hear that "training is for dogs," a common refrain in higher education that carries the unpleasant implication that skills-based education is the equivalent of teaching students to sit, stay, and shake hands.
For reasons that are not entirely clear, in the United States training is widely understood to be the end, not the beginning, of an educational journey that leads to a particular job or career. Undergraduates are supposed to get a general education that will prepare them for training, which they will presumably get once they land a job or go to graduate school. Any training that happens before then just doesn't count.
It is because of this belief that general-education requirements are the center of the bachelor's degree and are concentrated in the first two years of a four-year program. The general-education core is what distinguishes the B.A. from a vocational program and makes it more than "just training." It is designed to ensure that all degree holders graduate with a breadth of knowledge in addition to an in-depth understanding of a particular subject area. Students are exposed to a broad range of disciplines and are pushed to think critically about the social, cultural, and historical context in which they live. It is supposed to guarantee that all graduates can write, have a basic understanding of the scientific method, have heard of the Marshall Plan and Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and know that iambic pentameter has something to do with poetry.
While few would challenge the importance of general education, both to students and to a well-functioning democracy, there is good reason to question why it has to come at the beginning of a B.A.—and just how general and theoretical it needs to be. The pyramid structure of the bachelor's degree, which requires that students start with the broad base of general requirements before they specialize, is what makes college unappealing to so many young people.
It doesn't have to be this way. There is no iron law of learning dictating that students must master general theories or be fully versed in a particular historical or cultural context before learning how to do things. Some students will do well under this approach, but there is solid evidence that some students learn better through experience. For these students, theory does not make sense until it is connected to action. Putting a lot of general or theoretical courses on the front end just leaves them disengaged or, even worse, discouraged. They will do better if they start by learning how to master certain tasks or behaviors and then explore the more abstract concepts behind the actions.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @02:15PM (11 children)
My degree (doctor of medicine) required thousands of hours of "on the job training" yet I constantly hear from academic types that "It's not a REAL doctorate"...
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday March 16 2017, @02:45PM (3 children)
Medicine is an art, and you'll still be practicing at it until you're worn out and thrown away. The doctor who cut my belly open is 19 years my senior, and he's still practicing. If he ever gets good at it, he can stop practicing.
As for the assholes with the elitest attitudes? Fek 'em. You already know that few of them could keep up with you. None of them had such demanding training, few if any have such demanding jobs. Just fek 'em. And, when they come to your office, you can prank them by sewing their assholes shut!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @05:09PM (1 child)
Ever bother to look up the word practice in a dictionary? Moron...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @05:25PM
Fuck off and die, idiot - gp merely posted an old joke, that was probably a tired joke when Hippocrates was learning medicine. The doctor to whom gp was responding undoubtadly recognized the joke, and grimaced at seeing it tossed at him one more time. And, you entirely missed gp's words of encouragement to the doctor in the following paragraph. Illiteracy - it's everywhere!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @05:32PM
> As for the assholes with the elitest attitudes?
In my experience, that would be surgeons. Something about having the confidence to cut people open and believe that it will make them better also seems to select for assholes. As in, basically every surgeon I've ever met.
One friend recommends surgeons with a reverse correlation -- "He's the worst asshole, but the best heart surgeon in the area." A little research turned up that this particular surgeon lost his license for a year when he was younger, for cursing his nurse in the OR and spraying her with blood!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @03:53PM
As someone who got a PhD, I'd like to say that I admire your dedication and patience, and I know I could never have gotten a medical degree.
I personally consider an MD to be harder to get and more valuable than a PhD, and I'll do my best to point this out to other PhDs when it comes up.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @04:56PM (4 children)
An MD isn't equivalent to a PhD because the goals of the two programs and their outputs are different. The former takes a high-capacity brain and turns it into an effective pattern-matching system that can work with an enormous number of inputs and possibilities and complexities (symptoms -> diagnosis -> treatment in context of environment). The latter program takes a medium-to-high capacity brain and turns it into a system to expand the body of knowledge by first learning what is, identifying gaps in the BoK, and either filling in those gaps, or defining or building what's next in the body of knowledge.
MDs spend more time learning than PhDs, but the two are clearly different. PhDs resent the "recent" historical appropriation of the term "Doctor" by MDs because the goals of the two programs are different, and the length of education doesn't make them equivalent.
You should go get a PhD, you clearly have the capacity :-)
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Thursday March 16 2017, @05:27PM (3 children)
It seems to me the primary skill you'd want in an MD is someone with a truly fantastic memory. The more they can memorize, the better they can do in diagnosis. This is why there's work in applying AI to this profession, because computers can memorize stuff so much easier than humans, and can be constantly kept up-to-date on the most recent advances and learnings. Does your doctor know that just last week, some new clinical trial determined X, which could apply directly to his patient today? Probably not.
In a way, MDs are a lot like technicians in other fields; they work hands-on, and each situation is a little different, and they need to remember all kinds of minute details about the systems they're working on (human bodies in this case, rather than a plethora of car models or HVAC systems or electronic manufacturing). But they're not really scientists (there are some doctors who do more actual research, but not your PCP), and they're certainly not engineers because they don't attempt to re-design the system, just to patch it up and solve any problems in its operation. The main difference between MDs and other techs is the sheer complexity of the system, plus the "soft skills" of having to actually talk to and reason with a real human instead of a static, mindless inanimate (when not under power) object.
PhDs, as you said, seem to mainly concentrate on expanding the body of knowledge, and get into fundamental questions of epistemology.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @06:38PM
The best cable tech I ever met was a scruffy contractor guy in a half rusted out truck that fixed in 20 min by relocating the cable and sealing it so water didn't get in, what 3 other cable techs had failed to do rebooting the modem.
As for Phd's the are largely useless, a small minority make real contributions.
Most "discoveries" have been made by those are not even professionally educated, university is a tool of exclusion and class violence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @07:55PM
yeah. we don't need doctors. people just need a very good "app". i'm not joking either.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @10:39PM
Does your doctor know that just last week, some new clinical trial determined X, which could apply directly to his patient today? Probably not.
And it is probably best they don't. Most medical trials are crap, and therefore can't be trusted. When the trial has been replicated half a dozen times, then it might be worth your doctor knowing about.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 17 2017, @05:38AM
It's also because many MDs have a serious god complex and are unbearable assholes.