Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Rumors of Degree Cancellations...

Jim Davila has sounded the warning that the University of Manchester is considering closing degree level studies in Persian, Turkish, and Modern Hebrew. These are part of the monumental shifts in education that we have already seen in seminary education.

I had an idea for an MTS once that functioned on a seminar and mentor model. Students would work with an advisor and regularly present individual research at a weekly seminar that included students working on a wide range of topics. It would be on an Ox-Bridge model where the students would pursue an individualized course of study and would largely be self-directed, reporting regularly to the advisor and presenting to the seminar regularly. The number and specificity of the seminars would depend on the number of students in each category, but it would be scaled so that it could work financially with just one student.

I wonder if universities could have something like a "College of Obscure Majors." Obviously I'm joking, but it could function on a model something like this. I do think that the day of the "I know everything there is to know about a subject about a millimeter wide" is mostly over.

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