Acquiring a postgraduate degree has become increasingly popular in today’s culture. Many factors generate interest in this career path, including the general perception of achieving higher income along with government support and encouragement offered through various types of financial assistance,support-of-study leave to pursue a graduate degree, andhigher social status, just to mention a few.As a consequence,enrollment in graduate programs has increased over the past few years. Contemporary graduate education tends to be focused on preparing students to become scholars. Curricula of a graduate education will therefore typically consist of extensive coursework to ensure mastery of content in a specific field as well as a series of research …show more content…
They also allow students to improve their problem-solving skills as they navigate through the many challenges of completing their course assignments. However, this chapter argues that such an authentic approach is still somewhat inadequate for graduate education. By focusing only on enriching students’ knowledge about the profession they will enter, and by sharpening the many skills necessary to complete their tasks at hand, the programs have neglected the main and central purpose of higher education, which isto prepare students as functional agents of social change. Thischapter thus further argues that the missing element in contemporary graduate education is preparing students as civic-minded professionals (CMPs), that is, consciously-awareprofessionals being taught how to utilize their knowledge and expertise to bring about positive changes to society. This concept of professionalism is better known as civic …show more content…
Technical professionalism supports the view of professionals as experts with specific knowledge and skills. These professionals are considered as “purveyor[s] of expert services” (Sullivan 2005, p. 9). Conversely, civic professionalism refers to the ideal of social reciprocity between professionals and the public, that is, the people they profess to serve, in which “professionals … learn to bring their particular expertise into a larger, more complex deliberation about ends as well as means” (Sullivan 2005,p. 279). What really distinguishes each conceptis the ethical dimension of professionalism that is “institutionalized in the profession’s social contract” (Sullivan 2005, p. 23) with the public. ForSullivan (2004,2005), this dimension is the most essential, yet most jeopardized, dimension of