Educational Progress

In 2020 50% of the Dutch working populations must have at least a bachelor's degree. In 2005 39% of the people in the age group 12-18 years attended High School. In 1985 this was 27%. This educational policy of the Dutch governments is rooted in the "equal chances for everybody" principle. The doctrine is strong, but it doesn't mean that financial and psychological laws let themselves adjust to these noble strivings. "Equal chances for everybody" is too easily translated into "equal chances for everybody on a highly salaried management, entrepreneurial, or scholarly job". Everybody would like to have such a job of course. But does everybody have the competencies? We can see the consequences of decades of educational policy according to this principle:

1. The schools and universities ar put heavily under pressure to accept as many students as possible by financing them according to the number of students that got a diploma within the time limits imposed. This means that students at our school have to write a final dissertation after following the curriculum during one (yes, one) year; this holds for students who start in their second year because they have exemption licence for the first year due to lower-graded study. This lower-graded study is not directed towards further study, but to competences needed for lower-ranking supervising and craft jobs in the industry. The pressure for abovementioned educational goal on a national level urged bachelor schools to accept these students in their second year.

2. The final criteria of bachelor's and masters' educational degrees are adjusted to the learning capacities of the masses who knock at their doors: yes, diploma inflation.

3. Educational methods are adjusted to processing greater numbers of students through the curriculum in shorter time. 90% of all learning is now done in groups and teams, according to the so-called "constructivist" learning theory. This offers weaker students the opportunity to take advantage of the brighter students, and get the same amount of points as they get because they are in the same learning group. Constructivist theory assumes that students learn from each other, but it neglects the barriers it imposes upon the brighter students. When it comes to producing an individual achievement (at the end of the study: a dissertation or internship report) these students tend to fail and need intensive coaching and guidance (=time) of their teachers to get a diploma. Letting a student fail at the end of the study is "not done", not in the last place because the school is punished financially for it (it won't get money for a failed student, the school even tries to get drop-outs from years earlier back into the school to end their study with a diploma).

4. Schools are urged - because they never can meet the demands of politics without a maximum of creativity and entrepreneurship - to compete with each other, not in quality, but in numbers of students. Students are considered as "customers" who have to be satisfied. In official management reports the school speaks about "markets" (this merger will open up new markets"). As in all management handbooks is explained, quality = customer satisfaction. In education this means that a satisfied student is a student who gets a degree and is satisfied about the learning facilities and content (s)he got after graduation. The question is to what extent students will be satisfied this way, and what the satisfaction means when a student will not succeed in getting the expected job possiblities when his/ her real competencies are tested in the industry or labor market.

5. We see a brain drain of bright students because the Netherlands with their egalitarian ideology doesn't have Cambridges, Oxford or Harvards.

Looking at the photos above, I had to think of the study rooms in the sixties and seventies when I studied in Tilburg and Leyden, in which is was strongly forbidden to speak. It's true, we didn't have computers, and learning in a group we did only after having studied the needed knowledge individually in lectures and books. Silence and loneliness isn't needed anymore for study, on the contrary, if you can't chat or discuss no learning takes place according to the new theory! Nowadays this takes place simultaneously, and what you learn is easily forgotten because you can look it up on Google, can't you? It's even possible to Google a dissertation, a market for anti-plagiarism programs!

Of course, this is a one-sided story, there are also advantages of modern study methods. To mention one: students will be more and better equipped to enter the industry, knowing the ropes of how day-to-day practice will work out. Graduates are happy to have learned how to deal with others in meetings and project teams, this we learned from surveys held under graduates. They are also better able to exert self-criticism, they have gone through a period of engineering on their personality and communication skills, needed to guide them through a "constructivist learning environment". This is the other side of the coin, but the abovementioned drawbacks remain valid. It's a time phenomenon I think: everything is under pressure, only a few people are satisfied with what they have and everybody wants more and better. It's called "progress", lead by managers and politicians, not by professionals and intellectuals, whom we need very badly in these times of societal turmoil and tensions. When will this stop?

I just read part of an answer to these problems in the NRC, the best newspaper of the country. We live in a management culture. Mangers tend to look at figures, systems, capacities etc. and forget about content. This is enhanced by ICT which makes many formerly required job skills redundant. Studying other things than strictly required for job perfomance is too expensive, and must be avoided. Lately our school started an educational program "horse management" on bachelor's level. Students enter the school and learn about management and horses, but only just enough to run a horse stable. They are also not inclined to learn deeper and or more, because this doesn't yield "study points" and the time needed is added to the strictly limited time needed for the obliged study parts. So they have to give their student jobs for it, which no student will do. The labor market doesn't require experts or people with "general development" knowing everything about history, literature, or anything else needed outside the job or career. One thing counts: accountability. Schools operate in "markets": there will be a possible demand for horse people, riding and keeping horses is getting more widespread, so one can get "Master in Horse Management Administration". Don't ask these people how to write an error-free report, or when King William III ruled or from what artist school Mesdag was. Don't ask these people what they find about the novels of Couperus or Haasse, don't ask them what the capital is of any country outside Europe, or where Bhutan is located. Don't ask them anything outside stables and horses. It's not their fault, it's only what they are accounted for. But don't them call "Masters of Art" or "Masters of Administration". Good entrepreneurs, or animal keepers (not as expert as a veterinary doctor), that's what they are. But the frightening idea is that our society is filled more and more with accountable people who only strive for what they are accounted for, so that they can purchase the things and travels offered on the goods and service markets that have to be maintained for the sake of employment.