Some Thoughts on Breadth in Education

I'd say that an education is a bundle of experiences (organically encountered or engineered) with an accompanying bundle of inferences. By "experience", I mean something sufficiently general to cover all of: contemplating social constructs, building a model aircraft, recreating the proof of a theorem and even doing unspeakable things to white mice.

What the university and school system offers in terms of the bundle of imparted data, models and frameworks seems to be, anecdotally speaking, failing to meet the needs of employers. The ones who become the best employees or have the confidence to strike out on their own turn out to be those who seek out the relevant experiences.

But students are overloaded (or so they claim). There is some need to identify what is truly "core" in each "discipline" and shave down curricula to that "core", freeing up capacity for both students and instructors for more extensive education. There will be those who insist that the elementary course on their pet sub-discipline is snugly in the core and everything within should be taught in full. There is merit in that assertion, but a little less given the growing mismatch between what the university offers and what the workplace desires. Toes will smart, but it is all for the best.