Outcome Based Education: Too narrow and you risk devaluing human potentials.

Outcome based education, has been in mainstream education for good reasons. It ensure required skills, intended curriculum content be measured at the end of ones learning journey. This article, however would like to argue that the indiscriminate use of this method in higher education has unfortunate effects. In this article I will discuss two issues.

1. Failing to tap the full spectrum of human potential.

For any education or whatever production system, a general, big picture outcome is necessary, otherwise how can we be certain that something good is coming out of the system. But OBE has been applied in higher education, in a deterministic and overwhelming way, right down to every lecture conducted. This resulted in OBE becoming a rigid template producing homogeneity in various fields. Yes it is good to ensure the graduates have specific skills, such as using special software, or applying formula and process, or even behave in certain ways in various situations. However, in the emerging world of VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) , the effect of narrow operation, tunnel vision syndrome are unfortunate outcomes indeed.

One of the problem is this, focusing on specific set of outcomes actually does not tap the human potential in a student holistically. It is possible, the focus on specific outcomes will result in graduates who are set in certain ways, even worse, with diminished creativity. This is counter productive to an education system hoping to produce a dynamic, creative, innovative and humanistic graduates. To illustrate this let us look at this analogy. The story of the three sons is apt to be repeated here:

There was a man, who had three sons. He hoped all his sons grow up to be useful people. Once they reached adulthood, he said to them "Go out on a journey for a year and be a useful person".

The first son immediately went off to the world and tried to be useful.

The second son, hesitated and asked the father, "what do you mean to be useful? Can you be more specific?". The father said " Go and find 10,000 poor people". So he went off to find poor people who are in need.

The third son was still thinking, and said," I need to be more specific. How do you help poor people?".

The father said, "If you have wealth, you can help poor people".
"Ill do my best to find wealth" So off went the third son to find wealth.

After a year, all three came back. The father said, "now tell me what you have done".

The first son said, "I went to a village, the people didn't know how to read, so I taught them to read. The poor in the village didn't have enough food. So I persuaded the rich to help the poor. Once I found a donkey stuck in mud, I use all my strength to pull it out" The father smiled and said, "You have been useful".

The second son explain. "You told me to find poor people. I went on a journey, from town to town, trying to find them. Wherever I found them I record their names and addresses. Now I have in my hand, the names of 10,000 poor people and where to find them.

Father said, "Yes you managed to find the poor people, good, but have you been useful to them? "

The son said "not yet, I was busy finding them,..well, as you specified!"

The third son told his story, "I went to a village, they said there is a gold mine in the land but it is a long journey, so i traveled for a long time. Finally I  found the gold and and here all this gold is the result of my quest."

Looking at all the gold, the father asked, "with all this gold, have you been useful to anybody?

The third son said, "No. I didn't have the time yet.  I was busy finding gold, as you instructed me to find wealth".

The first son was useful because he never had restrictive definition to the word useful. Its up to him to decide how to be useful, tapping into his own potential, and his own assessment. And he can respond to his context fast. The second and third son was told of the specifics of what and how to be useful, too specific that they lost sight of the overall purpose to be 'useful'.

The moral of the story is, the more specific the outcomes being set for the students, the more likely they will loose sight of their overarching purpose. Their purpose is to be a good citizen of the world. Enrich them in all possible aspects. But we have reduced them to focusing on the predetermined outcomes, assessed  in specific matrices of testing at the end of each course. We might argue vehemently that nurturing of other aspects will not be stopped. But, with the overarching drive to do well in exam, this might be all they do. 

2. Specific outcomes may be obsolete rapidly.

What is in trend or in need today might not be so in the future. In VUCA times, 'future' can mean next year. The process of setting outcomes is an elaborate time consuming process. To come up with a set of outcome for higher institutions, it take years to formulate. Once in place, it will be many years before it can be changed.

The new 'normal' is this: Students want to explore what they can and want to do with their life, as long as they live. A science graduate later may want to be a mufti, or an Islamic study graduate want to manage an oil rig. A musician may want to design buildings (this already happened). This is the future trend and already happening. 

OBE instead mould their development to fit specific outcomes set by a group of people living in current paradigm. It os an antithesis to VUCA. What students study need not predetermine their career. Professional and industry specific skills now are easy to learn from various sources, and best NOT by university lecturers or professional educators, who seems always to be years behind industry and changing society. Special skills need not be a university course. It can be delegated out there. Micro credentialing is doing this and already changing the  education landscape now elsewhere. People pick specific skills, online mostly, just in time when they are needed. Innovative industry giants are already hiring regardless of university degree, but looking at specific skills, (ever evolving year by year) with matching aptitude.

If the specialists educators insists on teaching specific skills meant to serve industry and professions, consider this. Even whole professions are one by one being wiped out by the new paradigm, new norm. For all we know we might be teaching skills that soon to be replaced by AI. Its already happening.

All these requires the whole education system to do a deep rethinking. What do we teach then? This will require a new discussions. 

A coherent and discernible outcome is still necessary for every human system. Especially one that use a lot of resources. However, the outcome should be big enough to allow the full spectrum of humans potential to develop freely. This can be achieved by having a general philosophy for education that focus on the development of full spectrum of human potentials as a basis. That's all.

ZJ