My Ideal fantastic university education

I briefly mentioned my dream university curriculum but I couldn't develop it fully since I had to rush off to go somewhere. And so, more elaborated:

My dream university curriculum:

I'm wondering if I'm a Black Swan myself - the highly improbable freak event that, when happens, causes drastic changes to whatever system the Black Swan is embedded in. But that's just a personal opinion. What I'm really wondering about, is whether I'm a 'statistical outlier' - meaning, the dumb guy who refuses to play by the rules, and wants to do something different, or will I be the leading edge of a tide, the person who will set the trend for others after. But whichever it is, I have in mind, the idea of an ideal university education...

But just before I go on, something very quickly about NUS. I think NUS, in trying to accomodate British and American systems, has instead, become this weird creature that's really neither.The British system of majors works because it was created for industrialism, where specialisation was required. Hence the fixed programme, where once people went through it, they would have attained a high degree of specialty for whatever industry they are studying for.

The American system, however, emphasizes personal freedom and choice. So within the scope of the modular system, people could take basically, whatever they wanted, only focusing in their later years, and where intense effort is required.

So they are very different systems, designed with very different philosophies in mind. NUS, credit to them, has tried to balance the different impulses - by emphasizing the course - which means fixed curricula, and by implementing the modular system, which allows freedom of choice and whatnot.

For most people, it works out fine. Singapore's education system has been that of specialisation anyway, all the way from secondary school to junior colleges, and the entire process could be said to be a narrowing down of subjects. So it works, and I give credit to the people who made it work.

But well... there are this bunch of people who are just... active in their minds, who want to do everything, and are prepared, through their background, to do entirely new things under the sun. This bunch of people would have been really happy in the American system, but they are stuck in NUS. I am, actually.

But I suspect that I won't be the only one. I'm betting that there will be more people who will develop the inclinations that I have developed, who have read up on so much, that they are essentially graduates going through the universities just to get the qualification. But they are in an university, and some of them might see it as the opportunity to do the things they've always wanted to do, with the added bonus of having their efforts recognised. Or rather, that's what I've always thought. But again, I want to emphasize: the current system has worked for many people, and though tweaks are needed every now and then, I do understand that there are constraints, and that not everyone can have the education that they want. However, there is a emotional cost to that, that interests may be killed, bright young motivated people might just lose their spark, and something amazing might just be lost from the university, in spite of university.

So in my head, I fantasize about the kind of education that I've always wanted, and though people might not agree with it, well...

It could be something within USP. But this will be USP to the max, with the ideal of multidisciplinary endeavour pushed to the extreme.

It has to be uber-selective, in searching for students who can move across different disciplines with equal ease. Although there will be people who are aware, this uber-programme needs to have people who have genuine intellectual depth, who have done prior extensive programme before they could even be considered to be able to handle the workload. At the same time, there has to be strong institutional support - it is as dependent on the instructors as it will be on the dynamism of the students. It will be difficult, since good teachers are hard to find, and the context of NUS's priorities make it even harder.

Which leads me to another point before I go onto syllabus design. NUS is currently, almost, fixated on marketing itself as a research university. Which is unfortunate for undergraduate education since there will be many lecturers who will prefer to sit at their desk or at their labs crunching numbers for their experiment, or going through journals for their research. Which is ironic, since, if there are people who prefer to be elsewhere and teach really badly, then NUS is ultimately kicking itself in the foot - by discouraging students to do research, hence decreasing the number of students encouraged to do decent work in their respective courses. Now all of these are just conjectures, but so far, hearing from fellow students, this is what I'm hearing.

Ok, so its not that irrelevant. The system that I'm thinking of requires instructors who are extremely dedicated to the students, who are willing to either, set aside their research projects, OR, include students in their research projects in very close collaboration.

Now, given that there might be students who might somehow have the grasp to handle many many things in one shot... This could be the probable syllabus:

First year will probably be... doing exposures and fundamentals across the major faculties - physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, history, literature, philosophy, writing, statistics, computing... and maybe into second year. Depending on the students, they then start to explore and do research modules on their own, working closely with professors, maybe more than 1 instructor, especially if their research module is across different disciplines. Mashups would be highly encouraged since thats where all the new things are!

The research programme then becomes the main focus from yrs 2 and 3. Their research projects ought to be large projects, consolidating the connections between different areas of knowledge, and go from 8MCs to say, 16MCs. So every sem they might just do 2 or 3 research projects, but the workload required would be rather, large... Whatever they need to learn for their research projects, be it the technical skills to handle the necessary machinery, or the techniques of fieldwork, or the mathematics of statistical analyses - whatever they need to learn will be picked up while on the research project. It sounds huge, and yes it is. If this is impossible, then this dream syllabus remains just a dream.

And then in their final year, they do a uber-thesis, a consolidation of all they have learnt during the years in university.

While majors will not exist, there will still exist clusters - some modules students could do in a certain track in order to attain a body of knowledge they can apply. While they might sit in regular lectures, attend laboratory sessions, they will not sit for their final exams, rather, they will just keep doing research projects.

This idea will definitely have limitations. But then, this concept of education would not apply to the hardcore, focused researchers anyway... And yes, it might even be impossible to implement ever, but well, it is nice dreaming about it...

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