Student Newspaper

[cringleman]

You're right -- they do push university quite hard, and I believe this is a large part of the problem.

 

I still don't think that in a general science degree, however, that you can call it a "job factory" situation -- you highlight this, yourself, in your last post: in a science, arts or math programme in a university, the focus is on knowledge, whereas in a college, the focus is on useful skills. Certainly there are both taught in both places, but the central philosophy is different.

 

I'd also argue that, while you can learn a great deal for free online or at a library, it's difficult for most people to teach themselves as well as a good teacher (which is certainly not to say that professors are necessarily good teachers; many aren't, but that's a seperate issue), and one certainly doesn't have access to the experts in various fields as is the case at an institution like a university.

 

Someone taking a Bachelor of Science degree in physics at the university level will end up trained as a physicist, which is not really a job so much as it is a specialty of knowledge. They're trained very poorly (in general) in the use of the wide spread of research and analytical equipment and software, etc. that's commonplace in the majority of physics-related jobs; they might know how to use what's in a couple of the labs at their school.

 

I'm not going to learn anything about being a conservation officer for Candian Wildlife Services, here at Dal, but I'm hypothetically on the track to getting there (though it's not an ambition of mine); even if I did the work to get that job, I'd have to have independently developed a lot of the necessary skills for performing it.

 

It's a massive and widespread complaint of employers, these days: university-fresh employees lack many general skills that they'd like them to have (and that community and technical college graduates have). A degree in math will teach you to be a mathematician, perhaps. That's not exactly an entire career track, right there. A degree in chemistry does not teach you how to be a consultant or to run a lab.

 

It's actually notoriously difficult to get a job with nothing but a bachelor's degree in science, unless you graduate at just the right time with something that just happens to be in demand (physics was, a few years back, I was told). Math is a little different, just because skill in and deep knowledge of math is supremely useful for a lot of applications (everything from financial analysis at trading companies to the dirty, mind-boggling statistical calculus of actuarial science).

 

Medical, law, nursing, engineering, etc. programmes are designed specifically to train someone for a given job. That's a job factory. They are a definitive stepping stone into a career path (though there is obviously some choice involved). You don't graduate from science and automatically become a scientist. I couldn't tell you what my options are, on graduation, if I don't take some further schooling -- they're probably slim to none, if I don't want to work as a field assistant or research assistant (which pay next to nothing, and really require surprisingly little specific knowledge).

 

I respect the confidence with which you make your assertion, Moonlight Graham, but this is the continuation of my line of thinking. I just haven't seen any proof, in my time of seeing people graduate and get crappy jobs, that university could be considered at 'job factory,' despite the popular opinion that high school diploma + university degree = set for life in a cushy job.

 

It's also why there are too many people here that don't want to be.

[Moonlight_Graham]

Point well said & i agree with most of it. I agree that many times you do need further skills after you graduate from a university, but at the same time the majority of people who attend university are looking to make a career out of the knowledge they attain. Universities just aren't the "Plato sitting in a courtyard with his students debating philosophy & enlightening one's mind" concept they originally were. I'm just saying yeah you don't get all the complete tools in university to make you 100% ready to work the day after graduation, but the intent for people going to uni is to acquire what is needed to attain the job they want.

 

Sidenote: there's a HUGE misconception that college is for dumb people & universities are where the smart people go. I hate that.