Unversity courses mismatch workplace

I read an article yesterday about how university degrees mismatch what is really needed in the real life of work-places.  It was as if written by someone who knows me well to flip back, page by page, my past life at university, where I thought it would lead me to a gold treasure after my graduation.  Surely, I wasn't alone in that illusion as many students share the same false perceptions till today.  Universities only offer a piece of paper (certificates) that allows you to be a “critical thinker” and an independent learner with the skills of wisely justifying the world around you. Although this can be an indirect contribution to well-beings, it doesn’t often hand over to you an easy-money, as I wrongly thought before.  During my studies I met my PHP programming language lecturer at university and he told that his mortgage bill was forcing him to quit this job as a lecturer and wished to find better-paid work or run a business before bank auction his house.   It was a very devastating experience to see my academic role-model was struggling to pay off his bills.
 

Nevertheless, knowing the fact of this matter didn’t make me off and I continued my education until my graduation, because I didn’t have a choice at the time (people would have called me drop-off looser) and also it looked to me that gaining a degree would at least improve my social status.

After my graduation, I tirelessly started looking for a job but couldn’t find any at all.  I was so exhausted and felt the pointlessness of the years spent at the University.  Companies prefer employing experienced professionals than fresh graduates. A year of unemployment after graduation, there wasn't any option available, but to top-up my qualifications and attend other expensive professional training of Microsoft Qualified Engineering, CISCO, and Oracle and so on.   Luckily, I eventually managed to put my foot on the door of my first employer to work as an IT developer to lead a small team of software developers. I have to admit that it was my happiest day ever when I received the call from the university that my interview for the job was very successful.

Six months of developing software at university, sitting on my desktop all day and writing computer programming codes,  I realised it wasn’t the job I was looking for.  It wasn’t only a stressful job, but also couldn’t pay off my bills as my lecturer was.  My net-income on wages at university remained as exactly as the amount of government benefits paid when was a job-seeker, because government calculates your current income and any increase of it would cut off.  For this, many in the West feel better-off having the status of a “job-seeker” and relying on social benefits than getting employed.

Despite this, I would attempt to acquire my further education not for money at this time, but for the same social reasons that I mentioned earlier.  I am not here to discourage people pursue further education, but only to share an interesting experience at university that disapproved my dreams of getting rich soon after my graduation.

To be able to cope with life, people have to obtain varied skills and experience along with their university degrees.

Rashka

Author's Note

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