Over the course of the next few videos you're going to meet a number of the faculty who could be your teachers while you're in UMC. Before you meet this faculty and hear about the kind of work that they do and the kind of work that you might be doing, let me start by asking you a question. And this is a question that some of you might have thought about, but a lot of you might not have thought about. Why are you in college? Now, some of you will immediately know the answer to that question. And, if the surveys that I've seen are accurate, then for most of you the answer to that question has to do with improving your job prospects, improving your income, improving your employment opportunities. A few of you might not know the answer to that question. If you don't know the answer to that question, I hope that watching the next few videos will help you to figure out what you want the answer to that question to be. But let me ask you this. Why do you think that going to college and graduating from college would improve your job opportunities and your income? Now, there are a lot of skills that you can use In the labor market that are very specific skills. They're skills concerning how to use a particular platform, or how to master a particular process. And I can tell you right now, most of those skills are skills that you will not learn at UNC. There are skills that you could learn at a technical school, or a community college maybe, but you will not learn them at UNC. So if you aren't going to learn those skills at UNC, if you're not going to learn, let's say, how to type fast, or how to fix a car, or how to manage your accounting books. If you're not going to learn those skills at UNC, then what's the point of coming here? Why would coming here help you to get better employment opportunities or to make more money? Well, there used to be an answer to that question which was this. When you go to college, you learn lots of things. And in particular, you gain a lot of knowledge. And that knowledge is then knowledge that you can use in the labor market. And it makes you a more valuable worker. When you know a lot of facts, you become a more valuable worker. But the problem is, the problem with that answer today is this. No matter how much you know, Google knows more than you do. For instance, I'll give you an example. When was the nation of Tanzania founded? >> Okay, give me a moment. The answer is Sunday, April 26, 1964. >> You see? Google knows that the nation of Tanzania was founded Sunday, April 26, 1964. I didn't know that. And I bet none of you knew it either. Let's try another one. What is the atomic weight of plutonium? >> The relative atomic mass of plutonium is 244. >> 244, see? I didn't know that, maybe none of you did either. So look, Google already knows whatever it is that's generally known. So, the point of going to college can't be just to try to know more facts, because Google already knows way more facts than you'll ever know, or than I'll ever know. So, if what an employer wants is someone who knows a lot, they don't need to hire you, they don't need to hire any college graduate. They've got Google. But what employers want is not someone who just knows a lot but someone who can figure out how to proceed on the basis of what they know. Someone who can figure out thinks that aren't already known and can bring them to light. They want someone who can create new knowledge, and that's the job of the people that you're going to be meeting over the next few weeks. Their job is not just to know what's already known. Their job is to take what's already known and figure out other things that aren't already known. And the reason why you're going to be studying with them is because by studying with them, by apprenticing with them, you're going to learn how to figure out other things that aren't already known. See, what we're trying to teach you is not a bunch of facts, we're trying to teach you a skill. We're trying to teach you to flex a muscle that you probably haven't had to flex very much before. It's the muscle that you flex every time you have to figure out something that isn't already known. Every time you have to figure out the answer to a question that nobody yet knows the answer to. That's the skill that we're trying to teach you. And that's the skill that employers value. See, you could learn how to use some kind of platform or so how to use some kind of program. But that skill is only valuable as long as people are still using that platform or that program. Once processes change, and platforms change, then your knowledge of that platform goes out the window. It's no longer useful. But if you know how to adapt, if you know how to figure out things that aren't already known, if you know how to familiarize yourself with a body of so far unfamiliar information and then figure out what conclusions to draw from that unfamiliar information, then you're going to be in good shape. And that's precisely the skill that we're trying to teach you at UNC. And it's the skill that the faculty you'll meet over the next few videos have with respect to their different disciplines. So that's why we think it's useful for you to apprentice yourself to them. Over the course of the next few videos, I'm going to be checking in with you every now and again to see what you've learned. I hope that you enjoy these videos as much as we enjoyed making them. And I hope that you enjoy Carolina. See you soon.
