The disciplinary focus of this study into Urban Education is on the interplay between K-12, K-16 and higher education restructuring in the 21st century and the labor force. Higher education has inserted itself as the gateway and gatekeeper of “careers.” Research universities serve as nexuses for the fulfillment of the imperatives of businesses, government agencies, and nonprofits. The humanities in particular and liberal arts in general, have taken a back seat to the vocational slant of majors that fit more neatly into the desires of the aforementioned influencers (Kerr, 2001). With the diminution of the place of liberal arts in academia, Kerr’s “multiversity” has taken on heightened tenacity. The pushback against the vocational training infused in higher education curricula for ersatz academic majors seems to come largely from unsettled, and untenured academics (Bousquet, Nelson, & Nelson, 2008) . if media and social media portrayals are to be believed. Yet the issue affects everyone who comes into contact with the “multiversity” and with the colleges that often by legislation or social/economic pressure must mimic the large research university tactics.
While employers complain that recent college grads arrive with minimal soft skills (Klazema, 2018)(Bauer-Wolf, n.d.) in surveys and other feedback mechanisms; universities tend to place more emphasis on job skills in describing what employers want (Western Michigan University, n.d.). By tracking outcomes for the HSLS cohort based on high school and college courses and concentrations proxies for both soft and hard skills can be developed and measured to begin gauging the veracity of the myriad claims that obscure public and intimate perceptions of higher education. The variation in depth and quality of K-12 education has been studied for decades, scholars such as Jean Anyon have witnessed and chronicled the difference in content and pedagogy for working-class vs. middle-class children (Anyon, 1980). This dataset offers an opportunity to also explore educational and economic outcomes for children within the context of class and other demographics. Studies have previously concluded that education merely serves to reproduces classes (Hurn, 1994), in the same way that subsistence wages reproduce labor power (Marx, n.d.).
This study converges with pedagogy in two ways: 1) being a form of interactive, digital technology for the purpose of education and 2) by dint of its utilization method being an experiment in applied pedagogy. First, this interactive strategy to explore longitudinal outcomes can impart data manipulation skills to the user, as well as graphical reinforcement of statistical concepts. Secondly, the feedback gathered from users will help ascertain the effectiveness of interactive aggregated databases as teaching tools. This experimental method is going to encompass a digitized version of self-directed learning, which B.F. Skinner attempted to normalize during the mid-twentieth century (Watters, 2018). This strategy will also provide an opportunity for both the user and the creator to experience and study learning via demonstration and interaction, which though touted by John Dewey (Dewey, 2007), has been criticized as difficult to activate.
The amount of data, especially quantitative, available is unprecedented and growing. Yet, critical examinations of large data sets are still rare. The forms of education provided to students, and the deliberate segregation of arts and sciences has taken the Freirean “banking” concept of knowledge investment (Freire, 2000) to a new mutated level: the diversified portfolio. This contemporary strategy seeks to make discrete deposits of information for specific work-oriented tasks (Doyle, n.d.), rather than build a robust and complex network of information synthesis.