For centuries now, our educational system at the university level has been based on the idea that in 4 or 5 years after high school, we could give students all the information they will need during their whole career. This assumes that students actually remember some of what we teach them (that is a big "if", contradicted by the very little research done on the topic). But it also assumes that the knowledge we give to students has a "shelf-life" at least equal to the average career length of our students (roughly 40 years). This second assumption has been questioned not just by education specialists but also by discipline specialists themselves, who consider that in their field, knowledge becomes obsolete much faster than 40 years. In the sciences, the number of 5 to 10 years has been advanced as more realistic... In my own field of soil science, it is clear that some things are evolving very rapidly... In the last 15 years, the perception of what humid matter is in soils has evolved dramatically. So has the importance of soil functions or ecosystem services, and the view of soils in society... What do you think? What is the "shelf-life" in your field?
Hi Philippe, thanks for a very interesting and challenging question. From the perspective of the "shelf life" of the content in the fields of research I'm involved in, it stretches from very long for invertebrate taxonomy (I regularly cite publications from the first half of the 19th Century in my papers) to very short for environmental genomics and adaptation climate change (definitely in the five-to-ten-year category, if not less), with my main discipline base of ecology somewhere in between, depending on research activity in its numerous sub-disciplines. But on the process side, and relating to how (rather than what) students get taught at university, the skills they pick up in critical and systems thinking will last a lifetime, if they have enlightened lecturers who recognise these can be applied to almost any content and context. With hindsight, two of the things I would have found invaluable in my later career to learn more of at university would have been philosophy of science and some basic grounding in political science and economics. These would have taught me to think and act differently in relation to my main discipline base of ecology. I am now making up for lost time. Kind Regards, Matt
Dear Nabonita,
I don't believe that the shelf-life of knowledge in any field is "till death"... Take scientists and engineers who are about to retire now, at age 65... They were trained in the early seventies, at a time when personal computers and even calculators did not exist yet... People used slide rules to make calculations... The shelf-life of how to use a slide rule clearly had a finite value, and it did not extend until now. Who even knows what a slide rule is, these days? Also, the early seventies were way before internet, cell phones, and so many of the knowledge that we now take for granted did not exist then, in mathematics, in biology, in chemistry... Sure, some of the fundamental information that was learned back in the seventies is still current. Two plus two is still 4... But in so many other ways, knowledge has changed dramatically.
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