The Job of a Lifetime: The True Task of "Real World Experience"

All philosophers know that there is a difference between justification and explanation. Simply put, just because things have always been done in a particular way (explanation) doesn't count as good reason to continue to do them that way (justification). The status quo in culture, organizations, and even in one's personal life is often supported by a seemingly insurmountable degree of inertia. This makes a lot of sense for those in power, or for those benefiting from the status quo, because it is in their best interest to make change seem problematic or even dangerous.

For many, swimming upstream is only applauded if everyone else is already doing it.

And yet, just as it is fallacious to confuse explanation with justification, it is similarly fallacious to think that what has historically been the case is no longer justified. The former mistake leads to complacency and stagnation in the name of historical excellence. The latter mistake leads to immaturity and ignorance in the name of innovation.

Sometimes there are really good reasons that everyone is swimming with the current.

This narrow passage between lazy complacency and foolish change presents what we might view as an organizational version of Scylla and Charybdis. Companies, communities, organizations, institutions that don't change with the times can often find themselves on the trash-heap of history, but those that assume change is always good can quickly find themselves without an identity that matters.

Salmon make for great metaphors in leadership talks (or LinkedIn articles!), but bad examples for how to be a Bass.

Narratives of change are increasingly common in all areas of social life. Consider politics, for example. The slogans, "Change We Can Believe In" and also "Make America Great Again" are both examples of the significant traction available for those who can present themselves as different from everyone else. Despite the different political directionality of these two approaches, they are both instances of the seeming need to highlight one's ability to do things in ways that are not like the ways they have traditionally been done. It is as if Obama and Trump had both adopted Rousseau's adage that "I may be no better than other people, but at least I am different."

There is a lot of value in Rousseau's statement. Personal moral dignity is not found in being like others, but simply in being oneself. Subjectivity is not ultimately a matter of similarity, but of ontological irreplaceability (which is just a fancy way of saying that no one else can be you, even though lots of other folks can do your job, wear your clothes, or echo your thoughts). And yet, somehow the importance of individual selfhood, originality, and innovation must be tempered with the weight of historical trajectories regarding value, meaning, and truth.

History can be wrong (and it often has been). Thankfully civil rights leaders were not afraid of standing against the historical reality of white supremacy. Thankfully women have stood up against the history of patriarchy. Thankfully innovators in numerous areas have been able to envision different possibilities for how history might exemplify dynamic progress, rather than simply tired continuation. It is for this reason that Santayana was right to warn that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

However, history is also where we turn for insight into what might make sense for how to move forward effectively and how to articulate the visions of the future toward which we should strive. For example, even if both Obama and Trump wanted things to change, they both (at least we would hope) advocate such change in the name of facilitating increased flourishing of the old ideas of democracy, human rights, and social harmony. Indeed, it is precisely the assumptions that such old ideas remain good ones that critique becomes possible relative to shared social norms. As such, Obama's seemingly cavalier use of drones and Trump's seemingly nonchalant defense of family separation policies and childhood detention camps, say, are both instances where the possible moral challenges to be raised are not in the name of some possible future, but in the name of the history of definitive social values. It is for this reason that we might remind Santayana that in some cases the problem is not repeating history, but failing to live up to it.

As a philosophy professor who spends a significant amount of time engaging with the business community, I raise this complex issue of the relationship between innovative futures and historical inheritance because I think that it lies at the heart of a contemporary problem that brings the business world together with higher education: the value of "real world experience."

In the attempt to be distinctive, colleges and universities are falling all over each other trying to offer "real world experiences" as part of their educational mission and identity. Yet, often trying to be "authentic" just ends up looking exactly like all the others celebrating their "authenticity." Indeed, I had planned to provide a few examples here of college websites mentioning such things, but the examples are so plentiful and so ubiquitous that I quickly realized that such examples were unnecessary - the tough thing was finding universities that didn't emphasize this particular aspect of what makes them different from all the rest. Ah, the irony.

As such, and in many ways, this attempt to integrate "real world experience" into higher education is an innocuous attempt for schools to keep up with each other in light of current trends in demographic shifts, generational priorities, and social values. Effective marketing strategies require understanding the market and when it comes to prospective students, universities increasingly recognize that not highlighting their internship programs, their career services offices, and their economic return on investment, comes at their own peril.

We must remember though that all opportunities come at some cost. In the attempt to seek out new students by presenting themselves as distinctively committed to "real world experience," colleges and universities are far too often simply becoming indistinguishable from each other. In many cases, they have hired the same consultants to provide the same data and recommend the same "distinctive" strategies for obtaining a larger market share of prospective college students.

None of this is problematic, as such. Without students, colleges close and faculty lose jobs and society suffers from a narrower range of options for higher education opportunities. I like my job and think that my university offers genuine value to its students. So, finding ways to connect with prospective students is essential for any university hoping to stay open (or "in business" - we might say; a phrase that will prove especially interesting in a minute). Successful approaches to college in light of the quickly changing demands of an increasingly globalized marketplace, it would seem, rightly present college as preparing students for "the real world."

But, what is this "real world" for which the students are being prepared?

Or, better, whose world is it?

My worry is that it is a world defined by a corporate/business logic that is often at odds with the social importance of higher education itself.

Traditionally, higher education was about culture creation. Yet, increasingly, higher education is about culture reflection. Corporate influence at both the levels of administrative structure and institutional identity is (at least as I see it) having a detrimental impact on higher education because colleges are now more about producing employees ready to fit into a corporate world, than about producing people capable of asking what the world should look like. In the attempt to remain culturally relevant, universities are abandoning what made them culturally necessary.

Listening to what potential employers are looking for is important as universities help young women and men to see how living well (rather than living rich) requires finding value in work. But, there is a big difference between finding value in work, and one's job determining one's social value. When universities allow the narrative of their own excellence to be determined by purely economic factors, they abdicate the important work of thinking through what constitutes value in the first place.

If anywhere should be characterized by a culture of innovation, it is higher education. And yet, if anywhere should be characterized by a commitment to the patient work that is required by thinking well in light of the lessons of history, it is also higher education. The business world needs colleges to be good at their "jobs" precisely because their social role is not limited to, or primarily defined by, pre-professional training. I say this while also recognizing the importance of such training as valuable at numerous levels for a variety of reasons. The question is whether such training should be the desired outcome of university education, not whether it is an important outcome for young adults entering careers.

So, to universities I unequivocally say, innovate! But, be careful not to allow your innovation be simply a matter of keeping up with a marketing arms race that eliminates your historical identity and social necessity. Partnerships between the business community and the academic community are not only important, they are vital to the continued flourishing of both of these essential participants in the longstanding conversation of humanity. But, these partnerships must be asymmetrical in that each participant brings something different to bear on the shared commitments to social flourishing and human progress. These differences are not only due to different histories, but due to different relationships to humanity itself.

When businesses get to decide not only what humans can do, but what humanity should mean, they are ill-equipped for such work. Alternatively, when universities ignore what it is that humans are doing in their jobs, and what they are likely to be doing in the jobs of the future, they are ill-equipping their students to be the culture-creators that they need to be.

The current problem is that the call for "real world experience" by business leaders (and parents) is often code for the claim that colleges and universities are no longer socially necessary unless they are preparing students to accept the world created by others as "the way things are." Thankfully, though, the real game changers in history have been those who refused to accept things as they were. When universities understand the world as has been made real by those who see universities as no longer necessary, higher education (and human society) will flounder. We will get our graduates jobs by failing to invite them to envision new futures. We will increase their net worth by failing to invite them to think about the actual value of human existence.

Again, there is no conflict between the business world and the academic world when we recognize that neither can be their best selves without the other being its best self. This is why I think that Business and Accounting departments are absolutely essential for liberal arts colleges and courses in personal finance, professional communications, leadership strategies, and the basics of financial accounting are as important as philosophy, classics, and sociology. Finding ways to work across departments and academic areas of study such that philosophy is not seen as antagonistic to business, but instead a critical interlocutor for it, and vice-versa, is an important step in the right direction of modeling what we would like to see in society more broadly.

Sometimes we get the strength to swim upstream when we are able to link up with others trying to move in the same direction.

For what it is worth, I actually think that my own institution is impressively leading the way in thinking carefully and constructively about how to engage in such partnerships. Innovation as a way of life and entrepreneurship as a mindset are things that should be cultivated in all students - regardless of major, career interest, or particular skill set. I applaud my institution for understanding this and I am excited to be part of the best of what engagement can look like when all stakeholders are invited to the discursive table to think together about how to seek excellence today and inspire others toward it tomorrow.

As I see it, though, so long as the business world just is "the real world," the "world" will never allow for genuine innovation - neither in business nor in education. Instead, it will only allow for folks to play around the edges of what they have been handed by others. Innovators must be aspirational in light of where they find themselves, rather than merely realists who grow complacent with the way things are. This is why we must encourage students to participate in internships, study away programs, and a variety of other engaged learning opportunities. In doing so they disrupt the assumption that there is only one way forward for their lives. And yet, we must stop thinking that more traditional classes are, therefore, less impactful, embodied, relational, or experiential than these other experiences. Studying away was by far the most exciting and impactful experience of my own college tenure, but I wouldn't have had the same degree of critical awareness to make sense of it in reflective ways if I had not had the prior courses studying culture, art, language, history, and philosophy. Since I had been invited in such courses to grow comfortable with questions, to be unintimidated by ambiguity, and to be flexible in the face of complexity, I was better prepared to navigate the dynamic realities of cultural "worlds" different from my own.

Salmon are inspirational in their disruptive approach to existence, but they are also made possible by the forceful constancy of the river's direction.

Let's encourage innovation by remembering history.

Let's foster engagement by inviting identity.

Let's move forward together by not assuming that "the real world" is a finished project.

At its most basic, business is about the value of social relationships and the transactions that characterize them. Entrepreneurship is ultimately about being unwilling to settle for the status quo. In this way, by inviting students not only to gain "real world experience," but providing opportunities for them to gain experiences that invite them to consider what world should be made real, higher education has always been, and must remain, committed to the importance of business, entrepreneurship, innovation, and disruption.

Perhaps when we re-conceive of "real world experience" as not something that this or that university offers its students in preparation for a job, but as an invitation to the task of culture creation in the context of history's triumphs and tragedies, then we will remember what education has always been about and why it must continue to be the business at hand and, for each and every one of us, the job of a lifetime.

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