Call to increase capacity (2)
Sorry dude, my use of the term ‘market demand’ is a bit vague in the original post. I dislike market-demand allocation if it is based merely on what students want to do. But if it is tailored to what the particular industries can support (in terms of jobs/placements for graduates) than I’m ok with that.
My understanding is that is what happens, though it is not as an efficient a process as it could be, at least partially because the process of getting an undergraduate degree is relatively lengthy.
In IT, which was my background, when I did undergrad study, the boom was in full swing. Everyone who graduated after 3 years got a job and those of us who stayed back an extra year for honours walked into jobs too. And then the boom burst. All those kids who were one or two years behind my cohort graduated into a market that didn’t want them. But what could those kids do? They’d already committed to a degree program.
A little bit of bleed is ok, it makes for more motivated graduates, and people can change their minds, but if more places are allocated to degrees because they are popular one ends up with wasteful supply.
I question the need for so many to go to university in the first place. Often the relevant skills could be developed through experience and mentoring, but our society is moving away from fostering that.
That’s a slightly different question, but yes. Paul Graham wrote something about school being a place where society sends those who are currently economically inconvenient. In lots of fields, that’s sort of true. What you learn at university, assuming you learn anything, is how to learn the stuff that you’ll learn when you start your day job.
I guess it comes down to how you wish to look at the role of Universities. I think they over cater, and would like to see a return to shorter duration technical colleges and on the job training. I fear Australia going down a path where you need a Masters to do anything… that’s how it seems to be in America.
The university model in the ‘States is a bit different to here. They seem to do less specific stuff as undergrads which makes “graduate school” necessary. Here we have highly specific undergraduate degrees.
Having said that, I agree that a return to tech colleges and apprenticeships would be worth considering.
