North Carolina State University - Agromeck Yearbook (Raleigh, NC)

Page 22 text:

in the sciences and technology who also know what ought to be feared and what ought not to be feared about the sciences and technology. But here you have all these other folks over here who make great judgments and great announcements about it and are just as prejudiced as the dickens about it but don ' t know anything about it. I have hoped that our Division of University Studies in a small way could broaden these comprehensions and bridge over some of these cleavages but I don ' t think we work hard enough at it and it ' s very difficult to get your hands on it. One of the things I like about the kind of campus we have here is that we have the opportunity, whether we take full advantage of it or not, students or anybody else, for these two cultures to be in contact. I wonder how we can do it more .. . Perhaps the most singularly significant statement made by Caldwell in that discourse was . . . I believe in specialization, but I believe that right along side that specialization there ought to be more impact of the other fields of knowledge . . . That, in a handful of words, spells out the difference between education and training, the reason why inter-departmental academic requirements should be at least maintained, indeed, if not increased, and finally, what the purpose of a university education is beyond its job money oriented aspects. It is important to note here that this is not a denouncement of those job money oriented aspects of higher education just discussed. That part of it is real, necessary, and appropriate. Moreover, those who feel that anyone who comes here should do so purely and totally for a learning experience in disregard of any career interest are just as narrow and wrong-headed as those who are their antithesis. It comes down to this: the shift in emphasis, at least since the late 1940s, in higher education has been towards the training aspects. The pendulum should swing back more towards the education aspects, though not to extremes that neglect realism in terms of future employment. A balance must be struck .. .