Specialization in Education

I think we need to be spending more time thinking about what our education is getting us, and

gearing it towards giving the most it can to students. This is particularly relevant in college education, because we need to have more specialization in our education. If we are here to get jobs and degrees, the way that our education needs to be focused is on getting qualified for a job, and being as qualified as we can possibly be. That means we need to be focusing more on one specific field—which we do already as we pick majors—but we can do this more. We can make a difference in our own educations, and make the educations of our children more efficient, if we can move towards more specialization.

Specialization is an idea that dates way back in history, and there are many examples of it. Most notably, we can see specialization in the Industrial Revolution. People were trained for one job in a factory and a work place and then things started moving faster. When everybody got really, really good at their one job, then the process got sped up and the quality was better, because everyone was doing great work—since they were focusing on one part. Even before the industrial revolution, people began to realize that if one farmer grew vegetables, and one farmer grew the wheat, and one farmer raised the cattle, then they could all have a well rounded dinner without having to learn how to make the best vegetables and best wheat and best beef all by themselves.

That’s a pretty simplified version of specialization, but the concept spills over into the modern economy and the modern job market. In our modern day, it means that everyone needs to be very good at one job, so that together, we get everything done that we need to. So, instead of having this perfectly “balanced” education (like you see in the diagram below) we need to cut our focus down to the marketable skills and knowledge that we need in order to get a job that will benefit the whole. This may mean less general education classes—or only general education that is vital, like finance and writing, etc.—and it will mean that before you set about getting a degree, you will have to know what you want to do. But that’s a good thing! That means wasting less time once you know what you need to be learning, and what the main goal is.

This was not the topic that I started with. I actually began this process of finding a call to change by fighting for nearly the opposite idea. I made the argument that education is about more than getting a degree or getting a job—education should be about learning and becoming a better person. The longer I’ve thought about that, the more I agree with it. We are here at school—and here on Earth—to learn everything that we can, and to learn to be better people.

However, I can see in our education system that this is not the system we have.  Perhaps High School can be like that: a time to learn about everything, explore different types of fields, and learn more about ourselves. Parts of college are like that too—living on your own for the first time, having roommates, making new friends, etc. But those are all outside the realm of the university system. Universities are for learning that specifically gears you toward a degree that will get you a job. That doesn’t mean that you won’t learn—in fact it means that you HAVE to learn. You have to learn to be the best in your specialized field. You have to learn how to apply your skills in a specific area so that you can do the most service, and the best service. The university system is leaning that way already, since we pick majors and are separated into colleges, but I think that we need to do more. We need to capitalize on this opportunity for specialization, and make it work for us, so that we are the best prepared that we can be for getting “grown-up” jobs and making our mark on the world.

Update: This proposed change would be for the way we approach university education. I think that as this change happens, more generalization of education in High school would help prepare students for a more intense specialization once they get to college. If we put a bigger focus on specialization, then it will help students to know that as they explore options, they are picking something that they are going to stick with and get good at. The emphasis for education will change, the systems will change, and in the end, that means the students will change.