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[Assanova]

Employers don't want to train. That is what it comes down to. They want graduates to be trained for a specific job they want but the employers don't want to pay for that training. These executives that say graduates aren't prepared were just as unprepared when they were new graduates. That is not the universities job and it is sad that people see universities as the place you go to learn how to do a job.

Some people think that business schools should be completely detached from universities as they don't really fit into academia and are all about the real world experience.

I also understand your position as I did an extra year of school to get a teaching degree and a lot of that program was not practical and an education degree is pretty much the same as your situation where the degree usefulness is pretty much tied to a specific job.

I am unsure as to what the answer is as I think there is a danger if everything in university becomes career focused. We would probably end up with even more specialization where people are literally only good at one thing.

This seems pretty simple. Replace one year of the useless third English, literature, cultural diversity, contemporary studies, etc. and replace it with one year of classes related to the real world. You still get three years of the regular stuff.

 

[Big-E]

This seems pretty simple. Replace one year of the useless third English, literature, cultural diversity, contemporary studies, etc. And replace it with one year of classes relates to the real world.

Again, that goes against a lot of what some people would want. If we want our unviersities to be just a "teach me how to do x job" place then that would be ideal. I am not sure whether I would want universities to do that.

My university was thinking of getting rid of the one year teaching program as they felt it was not academic enough and more focused on learning a skill.

I am not sure that just focusing entirely on one field is beneficial, or the right thing to do. I think having more and more co-op oppertunities in schools is a good way to bridge that gap but not everyone can do co-op given the sheer number of people in universities.

I also think there is a disconnect between American universities and the rest of the world. From my experience it seems that American universities are more tailored for jobs and offer way more degree options than comparatively sized Canadian universities. When applying to Canadian universities, there are actually not that many options for programs you can enter out of high school

 

[Lamel]

University isn't meant for meager job training, but for actual learning and enrichment, ideally for academic/scientific fields. Sadly job training is the status quo these days. It's sad.

 

[shinobi602]

College is a business. More students in = more money for the college, whether they are prepared or not.

Indeed. I remember paying my tuition recently at my university two months ago and got a reply of "Thank you for your business" at the tuition office.

Made me cringe.

 

[Big-E]

University isn't meant for meager job training, but for actual learning and enrichment, ideally for academic/scientific fields. Sadly job training is the status quo these days. It's sad.

Yep, if it gets to that point I think it would be a sad day for society. This is another aspect of the systemic problem we have that employers have carte blanche to do whatever they want. A young person does not have a specific skill you want? Blame schools. Employers do not want to train anyone these days and want to have their cake and eat it to.

 

[Assanova]

Again, that goes against a lot of what some people would want. If we want our unviersities to be just a "teach me how to do x job" place then that would be ideal. I am not sure whether I would want universities to do that.

My university was thinking of getting rid of the one year teaching program as they felt it was not academic enough and more focused on learning a skill.

I am not sure that just focusing entirely on one field is beneficial, or the right thing to do. I think having more and more co-op oppertunities in schools is a good way to bridge that gap but not everyone can do co-op given the sheer number of people in universities.

I also think there is a disconnect between American universities and the rest of the world. From my experience it seems that American universities are more tailored for jobs and offer way more degree options than comparatively sized Canadian universities. When applying to Canadian universities, there are actually not that many options for programs you can enter out of high school

I'm not saying that Universities shouldn't focus on academia. I am saying that a lot of the classes are redundant and it probably wouldn't hurt to replace some of them with classes that teach a job skill. A lot of those classes were either teaching stuff that I already knew how to do, or they were covering subjects that were only slightly different from one another. How many times does someone need to write a five page research paper or memorize PowerPoint slides that will be forgotten in six months?

 

[Kieli]

University isn't meant for meager job training, but for actual learning and enrichment, ideally for academic/scientific fields. Sadly job training is the status quo these days. It's sad.

Yes. But the universities are complicit in this behaviour.

I had a discussion with my professor wherein he noted that programs were lowering their entrance requirements/admissions requirements in a bid to get as much butts in seats as possible.

More butts = more money.

 

[Vanillalite]

Indeed. I remember paying my tuition recently at my university two months ago and got a reply of "Thank you for your business" at the tuition office.

Made me cringe.

It's also why some students/parents act entitled. They feel that way because it feels like a business transaction.

 

[knicks]

I learned Oracle, SPSS, SAP and other programs at my business school.

My internships were also pretty helpful; they were not exactly related to my major, but it was good real-world experience.

I ought to brush up on my Excel...

Where did you go to school?

 

[Vicetrailia]

If you're an Industrial engineer of course you will go deep into Pro-E and Solidworks, etc. But SAP? I just wanna know that it exists.

As a marketer I don't want an in depth class on Marketo or some sales lead management/crm software. In HR I don't want an indepth class on leading HR automation solutions when there are tons of them. All of this can be learned extremely quickly in the workplace anyway. I just need a class that lets me know that they exist.

An excel class is a must though.

 

[slit]

Yep, if it gets to that point I think it would be a sad day for society. This is another aspect of the systemic problem we have that employers have carte blanche to do whatever they want. A young person does not have a specific skill you want? Blame schools. Employers do not want to train anyone these days and want to have their cake and eat it to.

In some cases they should be blamed since they're the ones who try to instill that message into their clientele.

 

[SRG01]

Employers don't want to train. That is what it comes down to. They want graduates to be trained for a specific job they want but the employers don't want to pay for that training. These executives that say graduates aren't prepared were just as unprepared when they were new graduates. That is not the universities job and it is sad that people see universities as the place you go to learn how to do a job.

Some people think that business schools should be completely detached from universities as they don't really fit into academia and are all about the real world experience.

I also understand your position as I did an extra year of school to get a teaching degree and a lot of that program was not practical and an education degree is pretty much the same as your situation where the degree usefulness is pretty much tied to a specific job.

I am unsure as to what the answer is as I think there is a danger if everything in university becomes career focused. We would probably end up with even more specialization where people are literally only good at one thing.

Employers downloading their responsibilities to train employees from the company to the educational sector has been their greatest trick of the past 40 years.

All of these studies are pushing the narrative that schools should be skill-mills instead of centers for learning. Not learning the practicalities *is* a good thing; the employers should be teaching that, not the university. Otherwise we're just hollowing out the education sector.

 

[way more]

This seems directed at business school grads who seek to get business jobs. At some point schools and businesses thought they could apply a humanities education to business. What that means I still don't know, every business grad I've met doesn't know excel.

At least with a degree in archaeology or a social science you learn how to organize and plot data. The idea to create a humanities discipline but without the academia seems to have created this generation of unskilled business workers.

Focus on career skills, workplace experience, diversity

Students need real-world experiences to understand why they need geometry or biology, he said. It’s “because you’ll need it to build stuff, you’ll need it to be a health professional.”

Or maybe they could learn geometry and biology and learn how to learn. I'm not sure what we are blaming. The business school grads that they never taught to learn, or the humanities grads that never wanted to be jr. account managers?

 

[Zombine]

Being entirely technical, I have a career in Communications and I never got my degree. I've met many parents who spend thousands of dollars to get a degree in that field and they end up going nowhere. I won't sit here and criticize degrees, but I have noticed when you weigh them against networking and technical knowledge, it loses every time.

 

[GorillaJu]

Indeed.

Once upon a time, businesses used to train employees. They invested a lot of money into building good workers that knew the rules, had "soft skills," and, as a bizarre consequence, had reason to be loyal to their company and go the extra mile to be more productive and have faith in management.

But now, most companies aren't willing to settle for anything short of sheer perfection in their candidates. Training people is expensive, time consuming, and hard. It sucks when you take time to invest in a person that just moves on to another company. But that kind of collective mindset of fostering pure, free agent workforces only perpetuates the kind of job hopping culture that made them wary of such training investment in the first place. A vicious cycle of their own creation.

While Japan has loads of issues with society in general and the economy, they really invest in their workers and generally people stay on for life with a single company, jumping around between divisions and roles here and there. Compared with the states, job security is pretty good.

 

[Dennis]

woohoo I am at the top of the chart!

Damn, I should be making more money.

 

[Whitechocolatekrispies]

Omg Reddit had the best things for these:

Well... this thread made me feel depressed, like all the time I have put into college is for nothing.

Hahah wait until you actually get a job and realise how little they have actually taught you, and that that tiny amount they did teach you ... is completely irrelevant!

 

[Zombine]

Well... this thread made me feel depressed, like all the time I have put into college is for nothing.

Nonsense. You are working hard, and once you land your first job that degree will open even more doorways than you could imagine.

It's not a crutch though; you have to have rock solid communication skills and an awesome drive to make use of that degree.

You'll do great!

 

[Assanova]

I sometimes wonder if students are just refusing to take the real entry level jobs because of the low pay. I already had a job in my field several years before I finished my degree. I started out at absolutely shit pay, got promoted, finished my degree, and was offered an even better position. It was a position that isn't offered externally, and I'm willing to bet that it is a position that many expect straight out of college. My girlfriend went through a similar process.

I've met several kids with History degrees, and every last one of them expected a good position straight out of college. Not one of them wanted to take the single digit hourly rate at the art museum or historical center that are pretty well known. Those jobs pay next to minimum wage, but can be worth it just to get your foot in the door.

 

[entremet]

I was prepared, but not because of college, but due to work experience via jobs and internships.

College can be a scam at times.

 

[David Incorporated Esq.]

Hahah wait until you actually get a job and realise how little they have actually taught you, and that that tiny amount they did teach you ... is completely irrelevant!

Yep, even as a mechanical engineer I didn't learn anything that was applicable to everyday work as an actual mechanical engineer.

A bachelor's degree does two things:

1. Prepares you for graduate school.

2. Proves that you're a smart person with the capacity for hard work and learning.

Nonsense. You are working hard, and once you land your first job that degree will open even more doorways than you could imagine.

It's not a crutch though; you have to have rock solid communication skills and an awesome drive to make use of that degree.

You'll do great!

Communication and networking are the most important things you can learn in college. Unfortunately they are two things that no college bothers to make necessary in all degrees.