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In Colorado there is discussion about changing the fee structure so that students who pursue "business-ready" subjects (medicine, business, law, engineering) pay less than those who take degrees that do not lead directly and obviously to jobs. This leads to hand-wringing about "the purpose of a university is not to be a trade school," but I think that's a bit unrealistic. If you go to a school like Harvard or Cambridge, etc., then you can study Philosophy or Classics because your daddy has a bank VP slot waiting for you after the Grand Tour is finished. It's probably not going to be possible to elevate everybody to that situation. (Or at least it would be if we were living under different political circumstances, but that ain't gonna happen.)
The reality is that employers want to see evidence of application and achievement, and are just as happy to employ (e.g.) music grads as they are to employ engineers.
Or at least they used to be. Now they just want skilled interns who will work for free, and universities are supposed to produce cowed and stunted employees grateful for crumbs of corporate largesse and turbo-charged with the sacred urge to buy and sell shit.
Independent thinking is no longer welcome.
Unpaid internships are so out of date. Nowadays interns are expected to pay for the privilege of gathering experience.
So die civilizations. I distribute. You re-distribute. He gives your hard-earned money to lazy scroungers. -- JakeS
No, what's happened is that we've conflated trade schools with universities. Mostly the fault of a middle income group pretending to be middle class and wanting all the middle class trimmings. Oh, and businesses want those new minions fully formed employees who they, in theory, don't have to train how to do their jobs.
The whole vocational training sector here has been elevated to university status and the universities have been required to become vocational training services. Just in case they'd encourage anyone to accidentally think a thought. Which is what happens when your country is run by people who qualified as school teachers so they'd have a secure fallback in case the whole political career didn't work out.
How do you convince Shell to hire a Modern Dance major?
When I was in college, I was able to make $2300 in a summer--exactly the cost of tuition and living expenses for a year. At my first job, I made $8000. Nowadays, the price of school is up by a factor of ten, to around $23,000, but there are very few jobs available where you start at $80,000. Engineering, finance, law, physician...
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