Yesterday on the Other Side of the World

This is a chronicle of my life and times in the US, first as a foreign student from Malaysia/Singapore, and then as a cog in the wheel of a large US company. It aims to be a synthesis of (a) reminiscence of things past; and (b) blog entries I might have written if I had a blog then.

Name:
Location: Malaysia

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Who wants to study liberal arts?

“So, yeah, in Princeton there’s a great focus on undergraduate education. There’s no business school, no law school …”


I was trying to highlight the distinctive features of Princeton to a Malaysian friend who wanted to know how the university was different.


I was about to go on about how there was also no medical school either – there were no postgraduate career-oriented schools – so it could concentrate on traditional undergraduate areas of study. There were more undergraduates than graduate students, and the graduate student residences were located a tad off from the main campus whereas the undergraduate residences were all centrally located on-campus.


“But then what is Princeton well known for? Engineering?” she said.


“There’s no medical school either. Yes, there is engineering … but the central core is in the liberal arts. Things like philosophy, psychology, …”


I was feeling very proud of myself, how I hadn’t just self-centeredly boasted about the engineering school that had been so good to me in years past and also kindly offered me a visiting position recently, and instead been able to provide a more objectively accurate picture of the university as a whole. Perhaps, had I not been interrupted again, I might have gone on to concede that there were other universities with more stellar reputations in engineering education, and which might be better for hard-core engineering students. Nevertheless, I preferred Princeton’s style of engineering education, with a generous flexibility that allows engineering students to explore electives in the liberal arts and humanities. I might have expounded on the joys of discovering the classics, of seeing where centuries-old political theories still had relevance in the modern world, of …


“How is the student enrollment? Has it been dropping?” she said.


Dropping?! Why? Had I said something to give the impression that the university was full of demoralized students and professors, or that it had neither identity nor vision for moving forward, or was otherwise on the decline?


“Who wants to study liberal arts?” she said, in response to the puzzlement probably written on my face.


Who wants to study liberal arts? Indeed, how are the writings of dead philosophers going to help me make good money in the future?


I suddenly realized what a wide gulf there was between our perceptions of the reasons for going to university, what people are looking for in selecting a university, and what universities need to provide to students in order to be successful. Up to that moment, I did have some vague notions about there being differences in educational philosophies in different countries, but those notions remained disorganized scraps of paper in the office of my mind. There had been no moment of acute insight, when all these scraps had come together harmoniously into a coherent whole. There had been no defining experience when they had coalesced into an existential truth for me.


Furthermore, these notions had more to do with differences in the ways students were (or were not) being led to explore new ways of thinking, helped to release their creative potential, and so on. Now, a more fundamental issue had emerged. It wasn’t just about differences in how universities were achieving their missions, but about what the mission was in the first place. We simply disagreed on what constituted a university. And that was my modest epiphany of the day.


Various memories came to mind, and I began to see with a startling new vividness, how they fit so snugly into my reorganized framework of thinking.


“So, you’re studying medicine – where did you do your pre-med? What? No pre-med? You went straight into medicine after secondary school? But how could you know at such an early age …” The brash, young, immature 18-year-old that she once was – the nerve of that 18-year-old make such a decision and lock her into such a career track so early in life! Not to mention that she’d be missing out on what I considered the “university experience”.


It’s not just in Malaysia that the best students flock to medicine. A friend from Korea recently mentioned that they have such a bandwagon in Korea too – to the acute consternation of professors in the engineering department (who once had the pleasure of teaching the best and brightest, and could count on the assistance of such to keep their research projects moving healthily along). Maybe a US-type system could give professors in engineering and other areas sufficient time to lure some students into their fold, thus resulting in a more balanced distribution of talent.


Many people would disagree. The extra years it takes to become qualified to practice medicine and law in the US system are years when somebody could already begin earning a salary. And to most people, a few years’ salary is nothing to laugh at.


Is a university education meant to prepare one for a particular career? Or is it meant to guide one to an intangible expansion of mind? (and as O.W. Holmes Jr. said, a mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimension)


Alternative ideas are not in short supply. Millions have read of the “rich dad, poor dad” concept and come to believe that the traditional university system (even, and especially, including top universities) locks its best and brightest graduates into a difficult and unfulfilling life. Why? Because it trains its students only to be good employees, whereas the key to success is in entrepreneurship, making your money “work for you” rather than the other way around, and so on. Of course, all this is based a whole other system of beliefs that we don’t have time to get into here.


How, then, should a young person decide on the best course of action? Perhaps a university education may help in making a wise decision. It may at least buy the student some time. Then again, whether you get that time depends on the university you attend.