CAO and the like

There has been a lot of heat around this summer, not climatically-at least here-but in the media regarding points, skills acquisition, language, appropriate degrees etc.. Long used to there been a proliferation of expertise regarding such matters in my own field of criminal justice, I am somewhat bemused  to hear Morning Ireland journalists and others now quite adept at conversations regarding the merits of project maths, and well informed about the niceties of CAO points calculation.

What characterises this discourse is the following: The economic and strategic import of skills in certain areas of endeavour is taken as a given, and these areas are fairly narrowly- not to say traditionally defined. Essentially they are regarded as those of science and maths, with some role for modern languages- the latter of course minus the literature. It behoves us to reflect on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Thomas Kuhn, that scientific endeavour is not so stratified, and that intellectual and imaginative bounce is not the preserve of any one discipline, no more than a facility in a foreign language will improve skills of communication without something more being imbued.

All the talk nationally about changed approaches to admission to Universities, and broad based first year or undergraduate degrees, seems to me to miss the point that students already- as always- vote with their feet to study and stay with what they like; that interdisciplinarity still requires one is imbued with a discipline to start (which is why there is much of the good work there done at postgraduate level); and that making options available to students to study interesting combinations across many faculties, can happen and does happen, within current offerings. Some of the best students I have known come from degree courses which are joint –as in shared by two disciplines- as they welcome the opportunity to ‘work with both sides of their brain’ as they put it. Some of the most disillusioned I have met, are those who have chosen courses because they thought them pragmatic–as in they would get a job -only to discover on graduating four years later that the world had changed. Where there is an opportunity for some of our young people to train vocationally, it may well be at postgraduate taught masters level (which is why our government withdrawal of funding is so shortsighted) and there are many rich offerings in that space. What must be preserved however is the intellectual freedom for undergraduates to range far and wide, whether within or outside their disciplines, in the undergraduate years. This must not be mistaken for repackaging of degrees populated with offerings from different areas or sectors, or become solely a product of same. It must be recognised and celebrated that this is also a matter of approach to scholarship very much found within the disciplines, not exclusively held by just some. When one looks at the lives that our graduates lead, and the major roles they hold: humanities graduates in finance and science graduate in development, their lived lives belie the notion that disciplines are either narrow or confined in their relevance or remit.