This scares me, no terrifies me because I had to do this very thing when training volunteers to be advocates for abused children. It was a 12 week course meeting 2 nights a week at 2 hours each. It was the most grueling teaching I had ever done because I had to take all the info provided and re-vamp it to make it pertain to Mississippi codes and regs. (Workbook on CD, no textbook) I worked 50 hours a week and it was incredibly hard. I don’t know that I could do that for 2 other courses and teach it all at the same time to make it different each semester.

From what I have seen from my experience is that many instructors quite often instruct the student to read a textbook, complete a segment of the review questions and test them on the subject. Until I attended several institutions that required labs with real practical applications, most instructing I received was of little or no value in the real scheme of life. It was valuable information, but not practical as a young individual trying to learn a vocation.

I have spent many years in the jewelry industry and learned quite a bit about mentoring. In Israel, to be a diamond cutter, at a very young age you begin to learn about the diamond cutting, something that your father does, who learned it from his father who is probably still cutting them, if he is alive. It is nearly impossible for an outsider to get the training unless they give up their life and fully devote it to the lifelong relationship with those that are training them, and that is only if the owner of the business lets you in. If the opportunity is given, you become part of the family, but if you betray them beware, you will never get a job in the industry again.

As a I became Graduate Gemologist the training followed a similar track. Someone showed me a stone and said it was magnificent. I knew they had to kidding when I looked at it. They suggested I communicate with the Gemological Institute of America who had educational programs to understand what constituted a good stone. I signed up for the complete program. Soon after I completed the first block of training and followed it with their practical lab program that traveled throughout the USA.

Soon after I found employment at a local jeweler as an assistant appraiser. The manager took me under his wing and taught me the most in-depth practical training I could ever receive. He was so detailed that anyone seeing his appraisals ridiculed him for the inane depth of measuring and descriptions he had done.

Life happens, and after a couple of years I had to move on. I continued my studies in gemology while also attending another university in another field. At the university it was required to complete a lab with each class. Unless the lab was one that had to be done on computers, we were required to complete our project by visiting local businesses and learn how they performed certain tasks, as it related to the course we were taking. After we completed the study, these companies would ask us to return with our findings. Later on several of us were given employment at these businesses because of valuable information the studies provided.

When I completed my university degree I continued the gemological side with sales jobs here and there. One day just before completing my Graduate Gemologist degree a wholesaler came by and asked me to grade some stones. Later I was hired by his employer because of the skill I had. To this day my grading skills are occasionally tested and found to be accurate. I have since moved on to another vocation, but am so grateful of the “mentoring” that I have had along the way.

In medical training as in the highly specialized fields or in sports, there seems to be quite a bit of mentoring going on. I am sure there are many more fields of study out there where mentoring takes place. But when are universities going to reevaluate the value received from students and parents who are overburdened with debt and still rather unskilled for the workforce. Or maybe the value received years later from the students that were mentored and and changed the world for good bequeathing huge sums of money for furthering the education of many more.

The real issue comes down to a few conditions that we as Americans don’t like. 1.) We want now. 2.) We want it without too much cost and 3.) We expect to win the big bucks immediately after a sheepskin is in hand. Another discovery I have seen is that frequently people realize what they were degreed in is not really what they want to do. It wasn’t what they understood it to be, and were disappointed and unwilling to step out and try again because of the same three conditions that put them in the position they are in now.

Back when I took a marketing class and we had to create an advertising campaign for a fictitious company, I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on something that served no ultimate purpose (beyond a good grade). So I approached a camp about doing something for them. It was so more enjoyable — and rewarding — to see them implement most of my ideas. So from a student’s perspective, this kind of shift makes a lot of sense.

But I wonder what kind of feedback you’ll get from the faculty… It would mean more work for them — or maybe work of a different kind, I should say. Some might not be comfortable with that.

However, as you say, something has to be done, because higher education in it’s current form is most definitely unsustainable.

There are some excellent points in here, many I wouldn’t have cared about just last year. But now that we are approaching college for two of our children, many of these ideas just seem to make sense. In addition to the textbook idea, I love the thought of shorter terms, making college more flexible.