Utah State University History Professor Norm Jones is slated to visit Park City Saturday to deliver a lecture on a topic he said the public has asked for - “What Is An Educated Person In The 21st Century?” Melissa Allison has more:
With 40 years of teaching history at Utah State University – self proclaimed higher education reform nut Professor Norm Jones said the public is driving the conversation.
“We’re in the middle of a conversation nationally and locally about what education should look like, what it should cost, how it should work, who should have it?” Jones said. “And in talking with alumni around the state I was really getting the impression they’d like to have that conversation.”
If you are thinking about sending your child to college, have a child in college or just concerned about the future of education – Jones said this lecture will address those and other issues.
Something that has changed - particularly in higher education he said - is democracy.
“We have more and more people from more and more varied backgrounds attending college,” Jones said. “And as that happens, its much more difficult to assume anybody has anything in common and so we’ve got to find some ways in which individuals can tailor their experience to work for them. Its very much that, its very much that we know if the student has to do something to take ownership of a project, rather than learning passively, they will learn a lot more and the skills will stick.”
Jones said people define what being educated means in a few ways.
“The one you hear the most about is, to get a job,” Jones said. “And obviously there are many jobs that require an advanced education. But the survey data form all over the country suggests that in fact it’s the education bit, not the job bit is the most important to focus on. Because along with that education comes a broad set of skills - communication analysis, quantitative reasoning, all sorts of things, at an advanced level.”
He defines an educated person much in the way Aristotle did.
“Its that ability to live in a complex society, to communicate, to learn rapidly, to make sense out of patterns of information and to take leadership,” Jones said. “These are all characteristics of people who are well educated. So, what’s changed in higher education is not our goal so much as the ways in which we set about achieving that goal. And some of its changed social times, some of its changing technology, lots of things go into the mix. But an educated person is still someone who is able to live thoughtfully in society.”
And while many won’t like to hear this, Ivy League colleges he said don’t necessarily offer a better education.
“The bottom line is that higher education, no matter where it is delivered, has pretty much the same goals,” Jones said. “The advantage you might be purchasing at some institutions is much more about the world of connection than it is about the world of learning. I’ve taught at Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge, places like that. I’ve always been impressed by the fact that my students at Utah State were, by and large, just as good as students anywhere. What is different of course, is the setting in which it occurs.”
If you want your child to get a job in New York City or to marry someone of a certain social class – then Ivy League schools he said are the way to go. But they’re not necessarily the road to the best education.
“The perceived quality of an institution is often based upon price, not upon what the student actually gets,” Jones said. “And that’s kind of a bad way to buy things but, its like buying jewelry. I have a friend in the jewelry business that said, ‘If it doesn’t sell, you double the price.’”
He said there’s a movement in American and internationally to get about 65 percent of their population college educated. Utah he said, is at about 43 percent.
The lecture is free and takes place at the Park City Peak Hotel on Park Ave. It goes from 5 to 6:30 p.m.
I’m Melissa Allison, KPCW News.