What do you think of this article on the education of physics?
Something which often concerns me about opinion pieces like this, is that employability, which was until recently a side effect of having a physics degree, seems to have become the primary goal. The first example in the article says
"[...] during which they apply their learning to solve research or technical problems based on global challenges, possibly posed by businesses." However notably, physics challenges aren't mentioned.
Encouraging children to learn from online resources, rather than textbooks is also (currently) a mistake; as they are in my experience very often inferior. Whilst a mix of resources is probably the best, I have encountered students who genuinely believed that watching a 3blue1brown video was in some way equivalent to doing exercises themselves. Students starting university need to be told what the best resources are, we shouldn't be simply accept their potentially inferior preferences. Find me a single online resource better suited to teaching Fourier Transforms than Robert Bracewell's textbook, and I'll reevaluate my opinions.
I actually agree that exam grades can be misleading and maybe there is a better way to assess. Everybody I know who got good grades, myself included, crammed before exams, and I'm not convinced if that really represents a mastery of the subject; although it does demonstrate work ethic, dedication, ability to learn etc.
The suggestion to reduce time in the lab is just downright wrong. We need to be improving our students practical abilities by expanding lab work and making it far more integral to the learning process and maybe even the assessment process. I've seen high-grade, covid generation students confused why their circuits didn't work with only one end of a battery connected. In my opinion, that was brought about by a lack of opportunity to turn their theoretical knowledge into real world knowledge. Students like that are leaving university without the skills to contribute to making technology for physics or addressing global challenges.
In my opinion, physics degrees should adapt to meet physics needs, and we should accept employability for whatever it is after that. If physics graduates become less employable then so be it; it's natural that desirable skills change with time (although physics skills are definitely important at the moment). Fundamentally, physics degrees should never be allowed to become generic workplace training courses.
