As the new year approaches, many seniors are beginning to consider what to do come summer, when they will be thrust into the “real world.” One of the most popular choices is to pursue a graduate education. Given lackluster prospects in the job market, a growing number of students are turning towards graduate school as the answer. Despite being steeped in academic tradition, many students do not fully understand exactly why they attend Loyola and how graduate school should fit into their plans.
From kindergarten through high school, students are charged with expanding themselves both personally and intellectually. They are charged with becoming well-rounded, contributing members of society. To the primary and secondary education student, knowledge can be lumped into just a few very general categories. Whether it is social studies or science, students are required to learn by rote the basic structure of their world and the factoids that allow them to function within that structure.
All of this changes upon entering tertiary education. Though much lip work is made toward creating well-rounded students, it is little more than lip work. Loyola’s Common Curriculum itself is little more than a holding pattern for students until they are mature and responsible enough to handle the upper-level courses of their major. University by its very nature is about honing the mind to a particular subject. Students choose majors and minors not to be well-rounded, but to sharpen the intellect, to make themselves better in one or two directions above all others. Since students have just a mere four years of undergraduate education, they must prioritize specific disciplines, so they must pick one direction to improve in at the expense of others.
Graduate education takes this to the extreme. The graduate student picks a direction to pursue and follows it beyond the limits of human knowledge. For them it is not even enough to pick a particular field of study to pursue. They do not “major” in a discipline; they focus on a field to the exclusion of all others. The biologist cares little for economics, just as the physicist cares little for English literature. Their interest in other fields quickly either becomes the stuff of hobbyists or manifests itself as a way to more fully pursue their intended field.
From master’s programs to full Ph.D. programs, graduate education is nearly diametrically opposed to creating well-rounded students. To be successful, graduate students must be willing to say, “My field is more important to me than all others; it is important to me that I focus on this field, even if it is at the expense of all other fields.”
Beyond high school, education is specifically designed to produce students with points. Personal preference and curiosity lead them to the subjects they most enjoy, which provides them with the motivation to learn more and more until they brush up against the previously conceived bounds of “fact” and expand the realm of human understanding.
David Holmes can be reached at [email protected]
