I would offer a different (but in some ways compatible) vision of jobs that explains what Winograd is thinking. In particular, I think that kind of vision is responding to two related problems. One is that people who attend an institution like Temple, major in eg history, do well, and then go on the job market are at a big disadvantage compared to people with the same educational trajectory at Swarthmore or Penn. The other is that many students come in to college without a clear sense of what learning is going to look like, or how to construct a plausible self for their career around a liberal arts education. Those people might well have succeeded better in a program based more explicitly around specific skills and particular jobs. (My favorite book about higher ed, Paying for the Party, is helpful for thinking about both of these, especially the second.)
The second point is I think especially useful--it may be that specificity of skills makes the narration of a working self easier for many students, but that still requires *narration of working self*--e.g., a kind of metacognitive awareness of the skills you've been trained in, what their purpose and trajectory is, and why they have value in some labor marketplace. Which Wingard's vision of higher ed would be terrible at providing, because even these students need to tell their own story rather than read from a provided card. (Think about the difference in a white tablecloth restaurant between the server who has memorized the specials and can describe in a personalized way why they're being offered--the spring peas! the chef's favorite dish!--and the server who ploddingly reads the name of the specials as related by the kitchen but can't say anything about them.)
I would offer a different (but in some ways compatible) vision of jobs that explains what Winograd is thinking. In particular, I think that kind of vision is responding to two related problems. One is that people who attend an institution like Temple, major in eg history, do well, and then go on the job market are at a big disadvantage compared to people with the same educational trajectory at Swarthmore or Penn. The other is that many students come in to college without a clear sense of what learning is going to look like, or how to construct a plausible self for their career around a liberal arts education. Those people might well have succeeded better in a program based more explicitly around specific skills and particular jobs. (My favorite book about higher ed, Paying for the Party, is helpful for thinking about both of these, especially the second.)
The second point is I think especially useful--it may be that specificity of skills makes the narration of a working self easier for many students, but that still requires *narration of working self*--e.g., a kind of metacognitive awareness of the skills you've been trained in, what their purpose and trajectory is, and why they have value in some labor marketplace. Which Wingard's vision of higher ed would be terrible at providing, because even these students need to tell their own story rather than read from a provided card. (Think about the difference in a white tablecloth restaurant between the server who has memorized the specials and can describe in a personalized way why they're being offered--the spring peas! the chef's favorite dish!--and the server who ploddingly reads the name of the specials as related by the kitchen but can't say anything about them.)