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Thursday, June 10

How Utterly Unfair, don't you think?

I quote Mr Thomas L Friendman, who wrote this in a commentary for TODAY:

" When meeting this year's grads it's best not to ask: "Hey, what are you doing next year?" Too many recent grads don't have an answer. They can't find jobs even remotely related to their fields. This year's graduation theme is: "Don't ask. Can't say." "

Reading this makes me remember how many of my graduating peers cannot do what we want - the universities that we truly most want to enter, the courses that we most want to take up, the jobs that we most want to work in and perhaps the business ideas that we most want to work on.

And most of the time, it is not really our results that left us hanging and stopped us from what we do. It's simply a lack of space in universities, a lack of confidence and or reputation in the private education sector (from almost everyone!) and perhaps a lack of boldness or passion is setting up our own businesses.

While the entrepreneur bit is only our own to blame, we cannot be made to suffer the lack of space / credentials in the education system.

Local universities have very limited spots for students. Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe they currently house less than half the student population in Singapore. Or lesser. (I read somewhere which actually cited 30%. Will find exact figures.)

This statistics is really odd, seeing that a Bachelor Degree is seen as the minimum in today's working world - that is, if you want to go somewhere in your industry reasonably fast.

So, if you need a degree but the local universities are filled up, you can only go overseas if you're financially able or do a private degree.

I honestly think a private degree is not different from local universities or the same foreign universities. There are institutes and partner universities who do work properly together to give private students the same education they would have received had they attended school in the main campuses.

But there is still the problem of credibility and reputation from potential employers and the public. Many still believe that the private education sector are dodgy places following the brouhaha over certain untrustworthy institutes. I have heard horror stories about how degrees - earned similarly from years of hard work and studying - are not recognized by employers and considered lesser than other degrees.

And I loathe the unfairness.

How is a degree gained from a credible institute working with a reputable foreign university neither credible nor reputable?

If so, perhaps we should return to the root problem and make space for all students to gain a fair chance to enter local universities - so that if they do not make the cut to their preferred school or program, it is only because of their bad grades and not a lack of space.

To be frank, I do not really condemn the fact that Junior College students get priority (after all, an A Level student is not equipped with any tertiary education). I get that they need the education.

But from the perspective of a student wanting to be well employed and well reimbursed in a working world when a local degree means the world - then yes, it is truly unfair.

Perhaps someone should have waved a red flag in our faces when we choose to do a tertiary education in polytechnics, saying "Go to JCs, then go to local universities! The world is a cut-throat place, leave the suckers behind or you'll be left behind in the future.

Not very nice perhaps, but that what it feels like.

Well, almost. I, for one, thankfully believe that private education won't destroy my future.

Read Mr. Thomas L Friendman's full commentary. He's a Pulitzer winner, and though the article's more for US than Singapore... it quite makes sense. Click here!

Labels: writings

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