A close reader of our business web page last week would have noticed that one article was in our "most read" list all week long. That doesn't happen often and the item wasn't major breaking news or one of our enterprise features. It was this column by Howard Root, CEO of Vascular Solutions, a Minneapolis-based medical device maker with about $100 million in annual revenue. In it, Root accused the University of Minnesota of pumping out undergrads with degrees that suggest they are ready for work in companies like his but are not.
He gave an example of a person who is graduating with a degree in scientific and technical communication but didn't have a hard science course on his transcript. The courses Root cited from this particular individual read like a list from the adult education courses that suburban parks and recreation departments offer.
Root wrote that the student "took college classes in karate, guitar, Latin dance, handball, saber fencing, golf and master gardening. Then, for some of his core curriculum, he took courses in team leadership, Internet tools, visual rhetoric, intimate relationships, proposals and grants, exploring the universe, and technology and self."
At first glance, Root's column seemed to be the latest incarnation of that age-old sentiment expressed as something like, "These young kids today don't know how easy they've got it." But the high volume of readership -- and the strong reaction Root provoked -- suggests he put his finger on something more important than that. Later in the week, we printed some letters to the editor and a column written by Bob McMaster, vice provost and dean of undergraduate education at the U. The campus newspaper at the U weighed in with its own editorial.
On Friday, Root said he had received about 200 emails through the week, most agreeing with his view that colleges have gone soft. "Other colleges have similar issues," he said, but he noted the U's problems are amplified because of the huge role it plays in the state. He said about 25% of the people applying for jobs at his company come from the U.
He said he thinks the column struck a nerve because the data on new college grads shows they have such a tough time finding work. He first blames the slow-ish recovery of the economy from the 2008 downturn, but that excuse only goes so far here in Minnesota, which for the past couple of years has had one of the strongest-performing economies in the U.S. But second, Root said, students aren't ready.
McMaster said on Friday that he decided to write the op-ed piece, which appeared in Saturday's paper, because the leadership of the U for the last 15 years or so has worked hard to improve undergraduate education. The U has been fighting to overcome a stigma created in the 1970s and early 1980s when its undergraduate program turned to mush with huge classes, the disappearance of letter grades and irregular course scheduling.
"There's a set of students who did not have a good experience here," McMaster said. "We're not happy about that but that's the way it is."
