There is a crisis of trust in higher education for a variety of reasons. The general public has become increasingly skeptical about the value of a college degree as costs have increased and it seems much of what is taught seems divorced from the realities of nonacademic life. Studies are increasingly showing a low return on investment of many college majors. It seems to me that one of the problems is that too many majors provide lots of training on knowledge of their discipline, but they provide little practical training on how to apply that knowledge in the world off campus. Universities need more skill training in order to equip students in how best to utilize what they have learned. This requires a bit of refocusing of what is taught.
The Distinction Between Knowledge and Skill
One of the things I have come to appreciate after 5 years of research on AKTiVe leadership training at Tampa General Hospital is the important distinction between knowledge and skill training. Knowledge training teaches people what to do and skill training teaches how to apply that knowledge. Knowledge training is about memorizing facts, definitions of concepts, and theories. Skill training is about using that knowledge to accomplish tasks. When I taught statistics to psychology doctoral students, in the first year I would teach them what the statistical concept of a suppressor variable is. On exams almost every one of them could give me the definition–they memorized it. They clearly acquired knowledge about the concept, but could they apply that knowledge? In the second year I would show them a published study in which the authors did not recognize that they had a suppressor variable. Not one student could tell me what the authors got wrong. They could not apply their knowledge and recognize a suppressor in the wild.
Universities Need More Skill Training
From what I see, academic departments do a good job of covering the content of their disciplines. That is, they impart knowledge. Where many departments fall short is in not spending enough time teaching students skills how to apply that knowledge after graduation, or in how to make the skills they have relevant. Many faculty feel that their job is to “impart knowledge”, perhaps because that is what they experienced in school. But things have changed as students and their families are finding that an undergraduate degree in many majors is not a ticket to occupational entry. Employers complain that new graduates are not “job ready”.
There is a solution, and that is to incorporate more skill training into college majors. Those skills would be taught in the context of the discipline, that is, teaching students how to apply the knowledge they gain. Students also need to understand how those skills are relevant to the workplace and how to sell their skill set when they apply to jobs. This can be done by giving students realistic projects to complete. This is already done in many departments, for example, in business schools, students create business plans for a new company. In engineering schools, students design new pieces of technology. At my university, there is a program where business and engineering students work together on a plan to monetize a new piece of tech. This teaches application of knowledge in an interdisciplinary way. This approach can be used to bridge many majors.
AI Can Help
One of the barriers to introducing more skill training is that it can be labor intensive. You can provide knowledge with a lecture to hundreds of students at a time. Skill training takes individualized feedback that can be difficult to provide. To teach writing well, for example, requires a lot of instructor time. When I taught undergraduates, I would often notice that some students were poor writers. When advising them that they needed to work on their writing, I would ask what kind of writing feedback they received in the past. Typically when they submitted written assignments, they would just receive a grade. I don’t blame instructors. It takes a lot of time to go over a student’s paper and provide detailed feedback, and most of us have little expertise in writing instruction. If at my university every student were to get just one hour of writing instruction per year, we would have to hire more than two dozen full-time writing instructors whose sole job was to do only that. It is just not feasible.
There is a new tool that can make more skill training possible. Last year I attended the Teaching and Learning with AI conference where I attended sessions about how best to use AI for instruction. One professor explained how she was using AI to give detailed writing feedback. She had trained an AI agent as a copy editor and students were given an assignment to write something and then feed it to the writing agent for feedback. They had to turn in their original and all their interaction with the AI. Writing isn’t the only skill that AI can help with. The use of AI can help universities provide more skill training.
Higher education is under stress today with many small schools closing and state universities experiencing cutbacks. To remain competitive, universities need to innovate. One way is to better prepare students for life after graduation and to do that universities need more skill training.
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