“I had a terrible vision: I saw an encyclopedia walk up to a polymath and open him up.”
Karl Kraus

It seems like people have been talking about reforming college degrees “forever.” Obviously, this is not true, or maybe it is, academics are always trying to design something new. The redesigning of degree programs usually fall into one of two categories; time to degree, and employability after graduation. Concerns over cost is driving discussions about time to degree and employability. The argument is if it takes less time to earn a degree, it will cost less, therefore, make it more accessible and affordable. The case for employability is that degrees should focus on skills that employers want so that degrees are a better investment.

Just recently, I read about another degree idea, the polymath degree. Project polymath run by The Polymath Foundation offers such a degree. The idea behind the project is to create a school that trains polymaths, individuals that “think” like da Vinci. According to Merriam-Webster, a polymath is “a person of encyclopedic learning,” according to Wikipedia a polymath is “a person whose expertise spans a significant number of subject areas, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems.”

In the polymath project, projects are the center of the educational experience. It seems to me that a lot of these projects are focused on industry partners and creating startups; in fact, the school lists professional applications as the most critical metric in their educational system. The degree will be the standard four years in length but student, with the help of mentors, follow education units rather than courses.

In addition to Project Polymath, there is also the London Interdisciplinary School (LIS) which offers a similar program to Project Polymath. Both programs talk about needing a new approach to solve today’s complex problems. They argue that issues stretch across disciplinary boundaries, so education needs to as well. LIS describes their coursework as,

“We believe that real-world problems require an interdisciplinary approach. This is why we offer one course that cuts across disciplinary boundaries. Our course takes the most fundamental theories and knowledge areas from across the arts, sciences, and humanities and applies them to real-world problems.”

In addition to employability, polymath degrees are an obvious counter to the increasing number of specialized college degrees. I am a little concerned with over specialization. When I graduated with my BS in Biology in ’97, the only biology degree you could get at my school was Biology. In 2019 that same school offers five specialized, or as they call it areas of emphasis, Biology degrees.

However, the fact that I earned BS degrees in both Biology and Biochemistry also shows that I do have a strong belief in cross-disciplinary training. However, unlike these polymath programs, I graduated with the additional credits for the two degrees 240 instead of 180. However, the real question is what is the balance needed between breadth and depth in a Bachelors degree.

The question of depth versus breadth is not a simple one. In addition to what you need for a successful degree, there is the fact that information is continually growing. Buckminster Fuller proposed the knowledge doubling curve in his book Critical Path. The knowledge doubling corve shows the rate at which knowledge doubles from year 1 to about 1945. If we took all the information created by the human race until year one as one unit it took till the year 1500 to double it, the next doubling occurred in 1750. By the end of World War II knowledge was doubling every 25 years. According to IBM’s Toxic Terabyte by the mid-2010s knowledge doubling time will decrease to hours.

The increasing amount of knowledge is one of the driving reasons for the growing number of specialized degrees. As the amount of knowledge increases the information an individual has to learn in their “field” increases. Eventually, it starts getting difficult to fit everything into four years. When this point is reached rather than change the structure of the degree like adding a year (after all life expectancy increased by 34 years from 1900-2000) schools created degrees with a narrower focus. It is indeed legitimate to ask; when do degrees get to narrow to be useful?

One of the counters to specialized degrees is a Polymath Degree. However, do polymath degrees even work from an educational point? Only time and hopefully, research will tell. Additionally, even if a Polymath degree works are they the correct solution to specialized degrees? A Polymath degree covers the fundamental theories and analytical methods across multiple disciplines. However, can students learn the information Polymath programs teach without learning the foundational information?

Alternatively, can you learn to properly use higher order thinking skills without first learning the lower order thinking skills? I don’t think so. We often forget a large part of first and second-year courses is learning the language of the field. As I have written about previously (The Language of the Field), the same words have a different meaning in different fields. If students don’t understand the meaning of the words, they can’t understand the nuances of theories and methodologies in a field.

The Polymath degree is designed to deal with what some see as problems in higher education. While I think the growth of highly specialized degrees, especially at the undergraduate level, are concerning I don’t think the solution is to create degrees without depth. I would like to see time added to undergraduate degrees to take into account the growth in knowledge. However, until we get a grip on the rising cost of education, lengthening the time of a bachelors degree will not happen.

Polymath degrees are an idea to reform higher education. One way or another, I look forward to seeing real research about student learning in these polymath programs. Maybe I will be wrong, and Polymath degrees will work, I’m not holding my breath. Even if polymath degrees work, there will still be a need for degrees with greater depth, traditional Bachelors degrees.

Thanks for Listing to My Musings
The Teaching Cyborg

“I never teach my pupils, I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.”
Albert Einstein

I have been interested in the improvement of education throughout my life. During my late Graduate student and early professional years, I attended many workshops on Discipline-Based Educational Research (DBER). In these early days, the workshops and associated discussions were not well organized and would often range far and wide. The birth of organizations like the Khan Academy, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), and other internet-based educational tools around the same time lead to a plethora of articles announcing that the Face-to-Face university was on its last leg and would soon die.

One of our discussions revolved around why the loss of face-to-face classes would be a tragedy. All the professors started by saying face-to-face classes were always superior to online (something I am not sure I agree with, but that is a different discussion) because of all the advantages the students got. Then for the next hour, the faculty discussed how they always get great ideas from their students, how the students think of things the professors did not, and how they taught so much better when interacting with the students. I remember asking “everything you just talked about are benefits to you what about the students? Shouldn’t we be talking about what they get?” I never got an answer.

Just recently I read an article The Subtle Erosion of Academic Freedom from Inside Higher Ed. The paper starts by saying that President Trump’s executive order about free speech while problematic is also distracting from the real loss of academic freedom. The author Professor Johann N. Neem argues that three things are undermining academic freedom. The first is the decline of tenure and shared governance; the next two surprised me. The second point undermining academic freedom is schools that offer degrees but don’t require “professors” to teach the courses specifically schools like Western Governors University or Southern New Hampshire University’s College for America. The third issue undermining academic freedom is the growing number of students that earn college credit through things like Advanced Placement.

Why does Professor Neem feel AP credit is undermining Academic freedom? Neem states “Yet a moment’s thought makes it clear that AP courses are nothing like college classes. They may be rigorous, but that does not make a course worthy of college credit. A college course is defined by the presence of a professor who is an expert in their subject and the freedom of that professor to pursue truth in the classroom and scholarship. … however, what defines a college course is freedom to seek truth far more than how hard a class is”

This argument that the essential thing in a college course is that the Professors can seek the “truth” drives the remainder of the paper. According to Webster’s dictionary, Truth means

1. 
   (a)
   
   i. : the body of real things, events, and facts: ACTUALITY
   ii. : the state of being the case: FACT
   iii. : often capitalized: a transcendent fundamental or spiritual reality
   
   (b): a judgment, proposition, or idea that is true or accepted as true
   (c): the body of true statements and propositions

So how does truth affect AP courses “ … AP courses, even if more rigorous, are less like college courses than even traditional high school courses because AP teachers must teach to a predesigned test …” lets think about this idea a little if a course can’t be “college worthy” because the teachers don’t have the ability to seek real things, events, and facts what about American Chemical Society (ACS) certified programs. Since ACS certified programs have curricular requirements, does that mean an ACS certified Bachelors degree is not a college education?

One of the arguments as to why schools like Western Governors is not worth a “college” degree as Neem states is “Students themselves do not interact directly with professors but with standardized online modules and learning “coaches” and “mentors” hired to implement a pre-existing curriculum.” While I do not personally know every coach and mentor at Western Governors University the ones, I do know care a lot about education. Many “professors” don’t really care about education. I have lost count of the number of professors at high-end universities that have told me “I do as little teaching as possible,” “teaching is the lest import thing I do,” and “I put as little effort into teaching as I can.” Additionally, graduate students taught 25% -33% of my classes which is not uncommon.

So if High School teachers teaching AP classes are not worthy of college credit because as Professor Neem said “ … high school teachers, who lack the expertise and autonomy to offer college-level instruction, teach such courses.” Then do we need to invalidate all the bachelor’s degrees where graduate students have taught courses?

Just like the discussion I had years ago everything in Professor Neem’s article is about what the professors get not what the students get. Everything presented is opinion with little or no fact backing it up. Where is the evidence that shows students that graduate from schools like Western Governors or students that have AP credit do not do as well or have a “weaker” education than other students? I suspect there is no evidence presented because there is none. After all, when it comes to online education it has already been shown there is No Significant Difference.

If you want to argue that Universities and academic freedom are central to the quality of a students education, explain why with examples and evidence. After all, everything changes over time, just because something is new does not mean its wrong. If seeking the truth is the most important thing in education then instead of just complaining about differences put some real thought into the issue and conduct research to prove it (if you can).

Thanks for Listing to My Mussing
The Teaching Cyborg