“Techne”: The Future Students—and Parents—Want

The continuing changes at the New College of Florida (NCF) have involved the concept of techne. It’s coursework that promises to connect students to real-world opportunities. What might techne mean, either at NCF or elsewhere? Recall this claim from my suggestion for the NCF Mission Statement: “No college does more to increase your odds of getting the future you want.”

Imagine an elite college that made this promise—exactly what most high school students and their parents—want to hear. I use the term techne to describe this approach.

Techne is a required sequence of courses aimed at increasing students’ ability to get an internship, job, and career of their choice and then succeed in that vocation. Depending on the institution’s size, more than one techne “track” might be offered. Students will be required to take one techne course per semester. The material taught in techne courses and the tracks’ structure will evolve over time as the demands of the job market change. Techne courses will only offer material directly related to employment, which almost always means technical skills.

Overview

Techne, a term from Greek philosophy, refers to skill or craft.

Elite colleges often fail to prepare students for the modern world. They graduate without the ability to make or do anything valuable, anything someone else is willing to pay them for. Are the students at fault? No! Elite colleges are at fault. It is our responsibility to ensure that every student graduates with valuable skills, as measured by the wages they can earn and/or the internships and jobs that they receive. Key points:

• No soft courses in squishy topics like “entrepreneurship” or “leadership.” Organizations want hard skills.
• No useless courses in theory topics like “calculus” and “computational complexity.” Organizations want to hire students who can build things. In the real world, you rarely have to calculate an integral.
• The test for whether a skill is valuable is whether or not outside organizations want those skills, not whether we think such skills should be valuable. The test is the market.

Starting salary is not the only, or even the primary measure of success. At the very least, we want graduates to have the option of a high-paying job even if they should choose a less lucrative career. Too many students have too few choices.

Imagine you are a department chair at Andover, a curator at the Museum of Modern Art, or a Gates Foundation program director. You are hiring an intern. You have a choice between two students: one with a solid liberal arts education and the other with that background paired with an excellent set of technical skills. Who would you hire?

Questions and Answers

(Q) Aren’t techne tracks just majors by another name?

(A) No. Majors suffer from two problems. First, they often fail to teach topics that are absolutely central to the relevant careers. The economics departments at many elite colleges, for example, often do not offer a course in accounting. Many economics majors want to go into business or consulting, fields for which accounting is a basic skill. A refusal to offer, much less require, an accounting course means that the typical economics major is unqualified to enter these industries. In contrast, a student on the relevant techne track would learn accounting skills.

Second, many majors require numerous courses irrelevant to student success in the associated industries. Most computer science majors, for example, require several courses in mathematics and theory, none of which is relevant to 99 percent of professional software careers.

There is nothing wrong with courses in math and theory. Indeed, much of the academic discipline of computer science is based on math and theory, so it is completely appropriate that an academic major should require such courses. But none of that belongs in a techne sequence.

The relevant techne course includes everything necessary outside of academia, like accounting for careers in business. Everything taught in techne courses is directly relevant to the world outside of academia, so there is no math and theory. Techne courses are everything that matters and nothing that doesn’t.

(Q) What track should a small school offer if it can only extend one techne track option?

(A) Every organization works with data and computers. A techne data track is the single skill most likely to help the most significant number of students.

(Q) Which techne tracks might a larger school offer?

(A) If there is only room for one teche track, then the best choice is a techne data track because every organization uses data. The second track would probably be a techne medicine track because many students are interested in health-related careers and because the required courses would almost not overlap with techne data track. A techne software track is another natural choice. It would be popular and include some faculty and courses in common with techne data track. Techne engineering and techne science tracks would also make sense.

(Q) Isn’t techne medicine just the traditional pre-med track that many schools offer?

(A) No. Elite colleges rarely offer courses designed explicitly for students interested in medicine. Instead, they encourage students to take biology, chemistry, and physics courses created by Ph.D. biologists, chemists, and physicists and designed to serve the needs of the biology, chemistry, and physics majors. Those are not the same things! Techne medicine courses would include all the material required for the MCAT and medical school, none of which isn’t. As always, the focus is on the student’s future, as chosen by the student. Students want a sequence of courses which will increase their scores on the MCAT and their odds of medical school admission. A techne medicine track does that and is evaluated by its ability to do so. It will also expose/prepare students for other medical careers should that be the future they seek.

(Q) Why not a business, finance, or consulting, or techne?

(A) First, techne tracks are not simply courses designed for success in a given field but courses designed to help students succeed in several related fields. Being an expert in working with data will give our students a significant advantage when they apply for jobs in business, finance, consulting, and almost any other industry. Therefore, a techne business track would likely have substantial overlap with a techne data track.

Second, a techne data track is designed to allow students to focus on specific industries they are interested in. Techne courses always require multiple projects, and we encourage students to focus on topics they enjoy. A student interested in finance could complete and would be advised to complete, multiple finance-related projects during her first two years.  A techne data track naturally subsumes techne—business, finance, consulting, or other areas— since so much of the coursework involves individual student projects.

Third, because students often spend a semester or two abroad during their junior year, we need to be aware of the natural limits of what the techne tracks can accomplish. (Students are only required to take one techne class each semester they are in residence.) Similar concerns apply to transfer students. In many cases, there will not be enough class time to do much more than make students experts in data and software.

(Q) Why not simply offer techne courses rather than making them a requirement?

(A) Each college must decide what promise it wants to make to potential students. But, having made a promise, the college has a moral obligation to try to keep it.

If you don’t make techne courses a requirement, many students will fail to take them, making them much less likely to get the future they want. Odysseus benefited from being tied to the mast because it allowed him to resist the Sirens. Students benefit from a techne requirement because it will enable them to resist the siren calls of fluff courses and other distractions.

(Q) Don’t elite schools teach students how to think, write, and communicate?

(A) Perhaps. There is little evidence that the average undergraduate becomes better at thinking, writing, or communicating during their four years in college. Companies like to hire from Princeton not because Princeton excels at educating its students but because it excels at screening its applicants. Even if we grant some progress in these basic skills, students will achieve the same level of improvement from well-designed techne courses.

The mission of techne is to increase students’ odds of getting the future they want. If you believe that students are more likely to secure a good internship if they are better at communicating—or any other non-technical skill—and that you can help students improve their communication skills, then by all means, include the appropriate amount of communication-focused material in your techne curriculum.

(Q) Don’t elite schools already have a curriculum that helps students in this way?

(A) No. Consider how little importance outside organizations place on the specific courses students take at elite schools. If Amherst College offered a curriculum filled with courses that truly enhanced students’ future career success, employers would scrutinize applicants’ transcripts to see if they had taken those courses. However, since the Amherst curriculum largely lacks this focus, employers generally don’t concern themselves with which courses students choose. The exception lies in technical firms, which may occasionally prioritize specific course selections and majors.

(Q) Don’t elite schools at least have some majors that serve this function?

(A) Sort of. Yale’s computer science majors don’t have much trouble getting software jobs after graduation. But, again, a big part of that is the screening provided both by Yale’s admissions process and by the computer science department’s required courses.

(Q) Are academic departments evil for having major requirements divorced from the professional world?

(A) No! Academic departments perform exactly the job the larger institution has entrusted them with. They are told to create a major which provides an excellent education in the relevant academic discipline. And that is what they do! And they do it well! No one told them their job was to increase their students’ odds of success.

(Q) Don’t elite schools handle this issue via administrative offices?

(A) They try to handle this issue via organizations like the Center for Career Success or the Center for Career Development. They mostly fail. It is very difficult to make this issue non-curricular because students are busy and also have a healthy distrust of administration claims and resources.

The critical issue is this: Does the institution want to make a promise it will fulfill for all students, or does it merely aim to offer resources that many—perhaps even most—students won’t utilize? A promise can only be kept through changes in required coursework.

(Q) Can you summarize the argument for techne is a tweet?

(A) Yes.

This happens all the time. Universities very literally are not training you for a job as a software engineer.

They are training you in the academic field of the science of computing. pic.twitter.com/DZU5IF199J

— Austen Allred (@Austen) March 25, 2024

This is especially true at elite colleges. Lower ranked schools are under much more pressure to teach their students relevant skills. It is also true in every major. Examples:

Universities very literally are not training you for a job as a banker. They are training you in the academic field of the science of economics.
Universities very literally are not training you for a job as a doctor. They are training you in the academic field of the science of biology.

And so on.

Image by Ivelin Radkov — Adobe Stock — Asset ID#: 274971898 & Edited by Jared Gould