Tuesday, 09 June 2009

• Some thoughts on graduating

  Graduating has found me at an unusual loss of words. I wold like to write something profound but it has been something less than inspiring. This time around has been more like a war of attrition meaning I lost all of the battles but still wore down the opponent, thus winning the war. One thing I think I learned is that studying success can only take things so far. Last weekend I watched a very long (three hours) interview of political and educational gadfly William Ayers. It is scary that Obama praised the man as an advisor for educational programs since he advocates the type of educational malpractice I was the victim of when I was 10. He did the common academic trick of looking for anecdotal evidence and cherry picking examples which confirm his conclusions. So he continues to push a style which has a very bad history because there are a few examples that were not as terrible.

  
  

  While not quite as blatant as Ayers cherry picking, the business school relies on studying “Best of Breed” businesses and the case studies we read stressed best practices. This misses at least half of the action in the world. I started out in the engineering program and the biggest difference they have with the business program is the stress of failure analysis as part of an engineering education, They spend a good deal of their time analyzing why some things do not work. I think that a drive to study best practices is of limited value if those practices are just layered on top of a bunch of worst practices. What was missing from the business curriculum was how to identify and root out bad practices which may counteract the best ones. I am afraid that my fellow graduates will be frustrated when they get out into the real world.

  
  

  On a lighter note; all that time I spent in the cafe in the library on the downtown campus paid off...I graduated Magna Cum Latte :)

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