How Practical Experience Can Help Revitalize Our Tired Model of Undergraduate Education

The author discusses a new model of undergraduate education that gets beyond rigid academic categories and combines the best aspects of liberal education, professional education, and practical experience. This model is called practice-oriented education (POE). The premise is that each of the three traditional forms of learning: liberal-arts education, professional education, and practical experience, can contribute to the others. Students in academic fields will better grasp the significance and power of their subjects if they have a chance to see them put to use in more practically oriented course work. Students interested in professional fields will get more out of their studies if they also take courses in the basic disciplines that typically provide the underpinnings of applied work. At its heart, practice-oriented education seeks to connect academic knowledge to non-academic life. The undergraduate experience is not a time to set aside non-academic challenges, but rather a time of transition from adolescence to adulthood, during which adult intellectual and emotional skills can be nurtured through thoughtfully designed experiences that link academic work to real-world activity.