For an early childhood program to be effective, it must promote?

Is it hypocritical for universities to simultaneously promote higher education program as ways of getting a good money making career and at the same time inflating the programs with courses irrelevant to the specific career selected?

• Colleges and universities often sell their programs as ways to get a higher paying job. If higher education is about improving ones financial prospects in the future, shouldn't the program be efficient and cut out excess and irrelevant courses?

• Answer:

  Yes. Many universities spend considerable effort selling themselves as places for technical training for specific careers, but then they run many programs based on very historic models of attempting to create universal scholars. These historic approaches were more appropriate during times when universities was attended exclusively by the very well to do. A career oriented programs and well rounded individuals are both positive approaches to education, however they are not completely compatible. For example, a person with lesser means, who simply wants the training for a specific career as fast and cheaply as possible, is often required to take a host of irrelevant, expensive and time consuming courses along with the courses they actually need for their chosen career. For this person, it may be noble but it is also rather arrogant of universities to suggest they have a recipe for making the person "well rounded". Who is really qualified to say who is or is not a "well rounded" individual? Of course people who have the means and are inclined to pursuing scholarship in the traditional more broad sense should continue to do so as they wish.