What characterizes 21st century university students - Essay Example

Rapidly developing technologies change the way people collect, use, and transmit information. In fact, they change the relationship between a person and knowledge he gets. Sir Francis Bacon pointed it out that knowledge is power. It is the main factor in the education. However the present situation has changed approaches in obtaining this key factor. G. Graff in The Ships in the Night tells about two undergraduate students; one of them claims that he trashes objectivity in art history, and thus he presupposes it in political science.

When asked which course she prefers, another student replies: „Well, I’m getting an A in both“. These examples imply that the students have become cynical relativists. A. Bloom in The Student and the University tells about a student of A. Koyre, who has written in his paper Mr. Aristotle, having in mind the image of contemporary but not the Ancient philosopher. Both authors discuss not only problem of institutional matters, but qualities of the students, as well. As a current student , I learnt two different academic approaches: the middle-European and the American one.

Although the two educational systems differ in many aspects, there is a certain common feature: students face enough difficulties in their way of getting a good education. And it is not only students’ fault.. Graff argues that, what is learned seems so specific to a particular course that it is difficult for students to see its application beyond. The author compares the situation with ships in the night, which are lonely, without a clear perspective of the way they are following, and with no conversation between them.

The ships in the night follow the different directions, although they could have cooperated. Broadening the question, Bloom argues that universities now offer no “distinctive vision”; this implies the presence of “a democracy of the disciplines” and ability to choose any course one wants. When a student arrives at the university, “he finds a bewildering variety of departments and a bewildering variety of courses” (Bloom, 1996). According to Bloom, there is neither an official guidance, nor a university agreement of what he should study.

Thus, it is impossible to make a reasonable choice. Both, Graff and Bloom, discuss the contemporary university education system problems, which deal first of all with absence of corresponding curriculum courses and at the same time with a big number of the courses, which can be taken. Except this, it is claimed that there is no conversation and connection among the courses – each discipline seems to be particularly different from others. A university as a knowledge server provides nowadays a great amount of information; there are even those courses, the very name of which seems to be vague: for instance, “Ways to philosophy”, “Modern society and sociological theories”, “Arguments about human nature”, “Dualist views development”, etc.

Under these names there