Friday, July 16, 2010

“Fears for philosophy degrees” plus 2 more

“Fears for philosophy degrees” plus 2 more

Fears for philosophy degrees

Posted: 15 Jul 2010 10:05 AM PDT

By NATHAN BEAUMONT - The Dominion Post

The Government's plan to link tertiary education funding to students getting jobs has sparked fears that the move could spell the end for popular degrees such as philosophy.

And an organisation representing universities is concerned the institutions will become more like employment agencies.

Dan Weijers, who is doing a PhD in philosophy at Victoria University, says the plan is a disaster and it will force students away from philosophy degrees because universities would target courses that produce more jobs options to get more funding.

"I would hate to think that would happen because philosophy is so important. It's a very structured way of thinking. It teaches people to think logically and clearly, which are attributes many employers hold in high regard. If the Government goes ahead with the plan, it will be a real problem."

Tertiary Education Minister Steven Joyce revealed the plan during a speech at Victoria on Wednesday. Linking funding to students getting jobs would send a strong signal about which qualifications and institutions offered the best career prospects, he said.

Last night he said the performance-based funding model would see 5 per cent of funding based on performance measures, including qualification completion, successful course completion and progression to further study.

Performance-linked funding would provide incentives for institutions to keep improving students' educational performance.

"We are not interested in telling people what to study or where to study it, but want to make sure they have relevant information about their future employment prospects before they make a big financial and time commitment to study."

But Mr Weijers urged the Government to reconsider its position, saying philosophy degrees alone were enough to get students good jobs. "I would be confident if I only had a philosophy degree, I would be able to get a job as a policy analyst. The skills from the degree are very important and worthwhile."

Vice-Chancellors' Committee chairman Derek McCormack was surprised by the Government's plan. Universities had a good record of graduates getting jobs, he said.

"To introduce something like this seems to be downgrading New Zealand's very good university system to one which becomes more and more like an employment agency. Obviously everybody wants graduates to have good employment prospects and New Zealand graduates do ... but we want universities to be more than that. We want knowledge to not be restrained to the utilitarian boundaries of just work and just making the financial side of the economy better."

Labour tertiary education spokesman Grant Robertson said he opposed rigid criteria that would lead universities to focus more on vocational training than education. "Not everybody who takes a particular course at university is going to end up in a job directly related to that. If you were to put in very prescriptive measures around linking it to employment outcomes, that could be counter-productive."

Five Filters featured article: Headshot - Propaganda, State Religion and the Attack On the Gaza Peace Flotilla. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Christian Living Resources, Bible Study Tools, Jesus Christ

Posted: 15 Jul 2010 10:41 PM PDT


July 16, 2010

Philosophy - or "worldview," as is the preferred phrase today - drives everything. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he, says Proverbs 23:7. An atheist has a worldview and it is just of this world. A Christian has a worldview and it is that this world is fallen and only God can redeem it in and through Jesus the Christ.

That's why the naming of Donald Berwick to manage the gargantuan health care law is so important. Berwick is not shy about his philosophy. He is a redistributionist who wants to help the president transfer the wealth of those who earned it to those who did not. He also has openly admitted that health care for everybody means rationing for some.

This means that the unconfirmed but appointed Berwick and his minions will decide who gets treatment and who doesn't. They will decide who lives and who dies based on their personal concepts of the value of life.

Difficult medical choices must always be made, but ask yourself if you would rather have them made by someone who believes life comes from Gd, or someone with a different worldview. This is what we are faced with and there isn't much time to undo it.

Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated columnist based in Washington, D.C.

Five Filters featured article: Headshot - Propaganda, State Religion and the Attack On the Gaza Peace Flotilla. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Hamlet’s BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age

Posted: 15 Jul 2010 11:31 PM PDT

1. First there was the epiphany. After ending a cell-phone conversation with his mother (while he was driving—tsk, tsk) he experienced a surreal sensation, in his words, a "feeling of time out of time" (page 23). After hanging up and a few minutes of quiet contemplation, he says he was suddenly able to draw up memories and develop an even stronger connection to her, all because of a few seconds on his "clamshell-style phone." After that, he began to semiworship his phone and simultaneously to vow to recognize the depth that technology can add to human experience. Despite his epiphany, Powers has come to the realization that being connected all the time also hurts us.
 
2. To predict the future, Powers goes backward. He examines the way seven philosophers—from Plato to Marshall McLuhan—employed the technology they had at hand. Though it feels like a stretch to compare Henry David Thoreau's telegrams to today's e-mails, Powers makes an engrossing case for why the paranoia surrounding new technology is overblown, and why it's really our responsibility to find depth and distance from these technologies to preserve our sanity.
 
3. Product placement? Powers obsesses about his "slender," "fuzzy, and faintly warm" Moleskine notebooks. He says it's about the magic of paper (page 138), but it's uncomfortably overplayed. Let's see if his term "Moleskine-ophilia" catches on.
 
4. Wait, Hamlet didn't have a BlackBerry! William Shakespeare actually used a writing table, one that needed a sponge and water. Regardless, Powers speculates that if Hamlet were less distracted, the play might have ended differently (page 155). Umm, probably not, actually. It was meant to be a tragedy.

Five Filters featured article: Headshot - Propaganda, State Religion and the Attack On the Gaza Peace Flotilla. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)