My education

Ken Steele, an education marketing consultant, organizes student motivation for entering college into four categories:  

1.   The scholars: " interested in education for its own sake…m otivated by altruism…l ikely to go on to graduate school"

2.   The careerists:   "attend college as a means to an end: getting a job"

3.   The conflicted:   "like the careerists but are not sure where they are going… pushed into college by society or their parents"

 4.   The drifters:   "interested in the creature comforts of a campus and would rather go to college than get a job"

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 I believe I am a bit of a hybrid. My reasons for attending VCU are at there very core, rooted in a careerist view of education. I would like to be successful and this education provides me a compass to guide me toward that success. However, wanting to be an engineer, I posses a strong desire to know how and why things work. For this reason I believe I may also  be classified as a scholar. 

There is no other way to understand the enormous amount of material necessary to be a successful engineer other than to attend a university. Not to take away from the merit in having experience in the field, but I believe that a thorough knowledge of how a system works will be much more beneficial when attempting to solve a complex problem. Both are essential however.

There is one last thing I would like to talk about. I have thought this since the day I entered the university and my experiance has only strengthened my opinion. As far as I can see, the major flaw in the education system is in the classification of majors. Students learn in individual classes. If given the choice, even students in the same major and discipline might have different goals in there education and desire to take different course loads to have different strengths within the field. These strengths are what should be presented to employers.

With this type of education I believe students would go to college with a different attitude. They would not only go for one of Ken Steele's reasons, but they might also go to strengthen the exact skills they desire.