>> They only convey what they had been provided with, they do not build upon & enhance their knowledge. That is being done by those who think. <<

In other words, academics don't think.

Individual, you need a defrag.

bonmot,
you're missing the point again & again. think !

Bonmot you really are the pits aren't you?

Just for you, I am a B Sc Mech Eng.

However I was lucky enough to meet an amateur motor racing mechanic. He was an accountant from back when you worked all day & got qualified at night. He taught me everything he could about practical engineering.

We built the most successful F2 motor racing engine Oz had seen. It finished only 2Nd in its first race, but won every one for the next 18 months after that.

When I ran into my favourite professor I started telling him what we had done, how, & why. When he cut me short, telling me I was wrong, & it would never work, I did not bother correcting him with the fact that it already had. I just lost interest.

He had shown me why most academics are a waste of space. Too many tickets, blowing off, & getting in their eyes & ears.

That opinion was reinforced when I came back from the Pacific with a great deal of knowledge about coral I had learned from the locals, & my observation building low tech jetties into the stuff, & found the AIMS, GBR marine park authority, & most of James Cook "scientists" only played in bathtubs in the lab, rather than actually go out to sea.

Nothing I have seen since has done anything but lower that opinion even further. Reading articles here, & listening to the ABC confirms that either academics are idiots, or they believe we all are. I suppose mixing with many other academics would lead to forming that opinion. The garbage sprouted by each new crop of obviously academic global warming supporters on here doesn't' help much either.

Tell me, are you rostered, & have to take your turn on grant support, or does it just come naturally.

individual, you were going well until your bizarre assertion that academics don't have a knowledge base and don't build knowledge - that they just convey it. The majority of academics (specifically, those who develop and run courses, rather than simply tutors who help students understand their readings and lectures) have the title of "doctor" or "professor" in front of their name. That means a PhD which, according to the University of New South Wales, "requires completion of a piece of research that demonstrates a significant and original contribution to knowledge in the field of study."

http://research.unsw.edu.au/doctor-philosophy-phd

That's contributing to, or creating, a knowledge base. They have the knowledge because they developed it.

Of course, this doesn't mean that they can convey it effectively. Nowhere does it say that lecturers and professors have to be skilled communicators or educators. I think that's one of the bigger problems in our universities. We have a lot of knowledge stored up, just waiting to be shared. Sadly, those who have it are often the least capable of sharing it.

Not missing the point at all, I agree with Brian Holden (and otokonoko).

Hasbeen, yes you are and you obviously have a big chip on your shoulder.

In answer to your questions - none of the above (and for your sailor mate's benefit ... I do).

Hasbeen,
as one of the more reactionary and negative posters on OLO I'm surprised to learn you have any degrees at all, as they usually bespeak a degree of open-mindedness. Even economists are capable of lateral thinking (though not of imagining any other system). Might I suggest you get an Humanities degree--Philosophy, History, Anthropology, English Lit; these are all contested schools of thought and so much more humble in their expecttaions than the so-called hard sciences, which lack rigour merely by virtue of their empirical naivity and blind political alliances.
The Arts on the other hand are fighting for their very intellectual survival in a world of philistines. The Humanities have suffered successive waves of Copernican revolutions, such that the hard sciences are yet to experience, or I acknowledge.

But back to Mr Holden's article; I failed to comment above on his more salient point about artisanship and practical learning. It's perfectly true that we've intellectualised and professionalised once noble vocations (this word is obsolete); putting degrees before practicalities, when practical experience is worth ten times as much. I verily believe an intelligent person could be taught brain or open heart surgery in a few short weeks in an operating theatre, whereas theory is lost as quickly as it's apprehended--the brain is neither accustomed nor proficient in abstract knowledge, which ultimately always proves synonymous with ignorance--since it is as ideological as it is empirical. Even putting aside hubris, to learn with the hands is at the very least on par with learning with the mind. Neither is complete without the other, yet the mind these days is flabby, and the hands are clumsy.