Letters to the Editor: September 25

RE: Blouw Globe and Mail op-ed

Recently Max Blouw wrote an editorial for The Globe and Mail expounding that universities should not be expected to train their students for specific jobs, but should provide a broad skill set.

I wholeheartedly agree, but I believe that this policy precludes the undergraduate business program from the university level of education.  It should be a college program because it teaches specific workplace skills and not research, which is what a university degree used to be about.

I am an arts student with the business option, because I believe the business courses will help me obtain employment in the future, though these skills could easily be taught by those workplaces.   Business programs are still important, and the modern world needs those graduates to operate.

But university is about research and the individual pursuit of knowledge, and Laurier’s business program does not conform; it is the pursuit of money. Business students frequently go their postsecondary career without using the library. The forms of testing are rote memorization, and group projects don’t require complete understanding of the material or independent thinking. For the math centred courses, it’s about how to follow structured forms and use formulas. To me, this belongs at the college level.  People who go to college get jobs.  I came to university to get a stereotypical, romanticized university education (and as a means to get to a professional graduate degree).

I’m not suggesting we demote the business program, but rather suggesting we restructure our idea of what college is.  I’m also aware that this is not feasible and will remain unimpressed that business programs have changed, perhaps degraded, what a university degree requires.
–Karen Lees