What can we do?

Lectures are fine and are often needed to impart information. That is OK, even necessary. But they are only one/third of the education pie. Most importantly they are weak in the most basic reason for education: Learning how to learn on our own. Lectures are also woefully weak in the "How To" department, which takes hands-on experience if not insight--also hard to provide by lectures alone. In one example, many PhDs we know are great at describing phenomena, but virtually incapable of discovering (learning) how, why and where to go from here. For further example, lectures on how to ride a bicycle, drive a car, or even analyze data are fine. But are these enough? For example, who would dare ride an airplane knowing the pilot had never flown before? Not in our experience nor in the cohorts we have contacted. Relating theory to practice falls short all too often, even in our great universities. This is sadly true even in science and engineering, where our experience with graduates fell somewhere near half who could apply their very real and evident skills to the challenge on a new job. Creativity suffers greatly as well. Societies that get the education equation right will be the societies that survive in the cyber-jungle we created for ourselves.

Empowering people through thinking and problem-solving is helpful. But much more than that is needed in too-many cases.