<p>Reading the later posts makes me feel a slight degree better. The fact is that, even in the sciences, the borders between so-called disciplines ae being blurred and even totally obliterated, and everyone agrees that's good except for people who are flexibility disadvantaged.</p>
<p>However, I want to say that, as one who has worked in corporations for a few decades and taken a number of training courses, while I think that teaching college students teamwork skills and the like could be a good thing for a number of reasons, college faculty are for the most part totally unqualified to effectively teach or even attempt to impart such subjects (and may not want to be qualified). </p>
<p>When my then-current employer moved into the teamwork concept somewhat over ten years ago, every employee had to take one or two full weeks of solid teamwork training classes, and lots of followup was needed for the concepts and practices to take actual hold on behaviors (if they took hold at all). College professors have no training whatsoever in teaching this subject. From what I have heard, they may feel that they have accomplished this by requiring students to work on projects in groups rather than submit individual work. Well, let me tell you that this isn't teaching anyone to do anything except find ways to accommodate others so that the work gets turned in on time - but that's only a very small part of teamwork.</p>
<p>Likewise, professors are not equipped to teach creative thinking, except for a few who do it naturally.</p>
<p>And on top of that, unless businesses are prepared to help with efforts to teach students these skills - say by funding qualified teaching staff or courses - then these wish lists will go largely unfufilled except by accident and the businesses will continue to gripe that college graduates just don't have the necessary skills for today's jobs [and outsource work to countries with low labor costs where nobody cares about whether or not teamwork or creative thinking is taking place].</p>