Day: May 8, 2014

I am always amazed when a hard left rag like The Minneapolis Star-Tribune publishes a column like this one written by a medical device company CEO explaining why he is unable to hire liberal arts graduates from the local “Big State U”, in this case University of Minnesota.  His company had a need for someone in technical communications.  Here is what he wrote about that student:

[He} took college classes in karate, guitar, Latin dance, handball, saber fencing, golf and master gardening. Then, for some of his core curriculum, he took courses in team leadership, Internet tools, visual rhetoric, intimate relationships, proposals and grants, exploring the universe, and technology and self.

So for a degree in scientific and technical communication, this student had no hard science, very little technical learning and only a “visual” communications course on his transcript. Even though we would like to hire an additional apprentice for our medical communications department, we didn’t hire this graduate because, despite the title of his degree, his curriculum failed to develop the ability to learn and communicate any subject even remotely as scientific or technical as a medical device.

And by no means was this student the exception. Other U graduates we interviewed had loaded their schedules with courses in honeybee management, personal leadership in the universe and my personal favorite, “cash or credit,” with the stated goal “to help students decide whether or not they want to apply for a credit card.” One credit awarded.

I am glad he added additional commentary about the fact that he did not expect the University to be a trade school.  His company expected them to train people on hard technical stuff, but not on stuff specific to his company and industry.  His company just needs people, even liberal arts majors, with a technical base that can only be achieved only through a classical liberal arts education which includes substantive courses in “science, math, literature, composition, and speech.”  Come to think of it, I believe we got more of that even in homeschool than many of today’s liberal arts students get during their entire undergraduate degree.