To the editor:
The article on “How Higher Education is Going to Change” talks about the increasing importance of consumer input to the mix of what is offered. But how do prospective students/consumers know what they prefer in their education? In many or most cases, they are clueless.
The typical entering student has no idea of what they want to major in, or even to study. Maybe it’s what pays the most. Maybe it’s what a parent majored in. Maybe it’s something that will help them bring about social change. (Nobody is worse than a prospective student at assessing the pros and cons of various “social changes”, unless it’s a professor with an agenda.)
Maybe psychology has some answers for these clueless consumers. We seem to be in a golden age of knowing what sorts of things are good fits to a given person’s skills, abilities, and interests. In my case, I discovered them when I was 40+ years old.
Only then did my lived experience, guided by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and similar psychological tools, set me on a path that, as they say so often on TV, “changed my life forever”, (or at least was a “game changer”).
The surviving colleges and universities will probably figure these things out.
Louis F. Sander
Pittsburgh, PA
