To nearly every professor I've met, the criteria should be something similar to this: A student is introduced to a wide variety of subjects and challenged by a variety of views outside of the cultural bubble in which the student was born; such so that an undergraduate student leaves better prepared to participate in educated society and make wise decisions in civic and public discourse.
I am rather iffy on this idea, it seems like an excuse for indoctrination. More often than not, the "views outside of the cultural bubble in which the student was raised" turn out to be "the professor's own views", with other other views getting sorely neglected.
edit: It also arrogantly presupposes the professor's intellectual environment to be less bubble-like than the students'. Anyone who has spent time around professors knows this is unlikely to be true.
Education usually blasts away many natural preconceived notions about the world. It makes engineers run tests and scientists run experiments. What better way is there to get people to question their own knowledge but by showing them other viewpoints?
It also arrogantly presupposes the professor's intellectual environment to be less bubble-like than the students'
I think the professor's intellectual environment is a different kind of bubble. Maybe it's a higher level of dogma, but we need students to believe in themselves while simultaneously understanding that what they believe could be wrong.
> Education usually blasts away many natural preconceived notions about the world.
In some cases, agreed. However, in other cases, it seems to do just the opposite: it seems to introduce new or enhance pre-existing biases and philosophies. From my perspective, it appears to happen most often with the so-called "soft" sciences, and most especially in things like literature and gender/race and non-mainstream sexual studies. There's very much a cult-like aspect to some academic fields, making them have more of the characteristics of a religion than of science.
Math and hard sciences also introduce and enhance pre-existing biases and philosophies and exhibit cult-like qualities--for example, a belief that other disciplines are less intellectually important or serious.
Don't get me wrong, math and the hard sciences certainly provide extremely important and foundational knowledge, but the prevalence of egotism and nerd machismo in these fields is as obnoxious to me as the flakiness that can be found in 'softer' fields.
Alas, I agree that it's all a big ripoff anyway. Just another entrenched, obsolete business model waiting to be put out of its misery.
Problems regarding close-mindedness of different disciplines are complaints shared among the educated.
But some uninformed people believe many things that are factually unsupported (vaccine myths, economic myths, etc). These are not things that educated people argue about. People who argue without any factual or reasonable theoretical basis do not better our society.
Unless you're going to charge that students are being judged on their conclusions and not on their process, or are being indoctrinated to a particular viewpoint rather than exposed to and challenged by various viewpoints in the service of cultivating critical thinking tools, I don't think the issues raised cause any problems.
The fact that professors may live in their own cultural bubble isn't a problem so long as they are competently presenting views to are new to the students.
The primary goal is to develop the tools necessary to critically examine any incoming view. Not to simply be exposed to some representative panoply of views. Any such array of views will inevitably be incomplete (due time, if nothing else) and the evenness of their presentation inevitably open to challenge.
So if failings of variety or fairness in presentation are deal-breakers, we're essentially throwing out any possible real-world examination of such topics, regardless of the particular bent of a particular professor or institution.
Because, of course, people are completely incapable of forming their own opinions when given a set of arguments. :)
The point is that the student is exposed to multiple viewpoints, and gains experience interacting with various arguments. That even includes weird things like queer theory (which I must say, makes a lot of sense as a gay man. I can't say how much it would relate to someone cisgendered and straight.)
I am rather iffy on this idea, it seems like an excuse for indoctrination. More often than not, the "views outside of the cultural bubble in which the student was raised" turn out to be "the professor's own views", with other other views getting sorely neglected.
edit: It also arrogantly presupposes the professor's intellectual environment to be less bubble-like than the students'. Anyone who has spent time around professors knows this is unlikely to be true.