"Is university necessary for all?"

It is necessary for all to have ACCESS to university, should they desire to take that path. Denying that possibility to working-class students (I was one of those, once) via impossible financial hurdles (such as those imposed by our present Federal government) is to move away from a fairer, more equitable society.

The dearth of qualified tradespeople and the dwindling numbers of those wishing to take apprenticeships is not due directly to the increasing numbers taking up university study - please don't confuse the issue. If the Federal government wishes for more young people to take up a trade, they shouldn't have taken away so many apprenticeships in the first place. Their response appears to be importing qualified (cheaper) personnel from overseas - a tacit admission that their policies in that area (training) were WRONG.

Many years ago in a university far away a group of pseudo-academics in a business faculty was asked what benefit students gained from attending university. I was one of those pseudo-academics.

These were our conclusions.

--Many of our students were too immature to enter the labour force. We provided a sort of storage vat where they could mature. This, we concluded, was actually our primary function.

--Students learned social survival skills and the art of politicking from each other. This was in fact the most valuable skill they picked up during their sojourn with us.

--By making students jump through hoops, not the least of which was sitting through mind-bogglingly stupid lectures, we were able to demonstrate that they had a certain self-discipline and tenacity and were mostly docile. Since employers value tenacity, the ability to tolerate boredom and docility this helped students get jobs.

--We ran an excellent marriage mart.

--We could not exclude the possibility that the students learned something valuable from us but we thought it unlikely.

Of course when it comes to real subjects like science, engineering or medicine the position is different. But most of the so-called business or arts courses are a waste of time.

As an employer I've found that one of the most valuable skills is the ability to communicate well. I was not interested in people who had done courses in "business communications" or journalism. Rather I sought out English majors provided they had included the classics in the electives.

A word of advice to prospective students. Eschew course with the word "studies" in the title such as "Women's Studies" or "Aboriginal Studies."

Avoid IT courses. Do some practical training and go get a job.

StevenLMeyer says:

"Avoid IT courses. Do some practical training and go get a job."

This shouldn't be restricted to IT courses, but a whole range of courses. As an employer, one of the least appealing things in a candidate is someone who has a degree (or worse, more than one) and has no relevent work experience. This person is of no use to me.

But as a more general comment, this article is right. As someone who didn't go to uni and now earns multiples of the average income (at age 30), I feel quite comfortable in saying that university is not a prerequisite for being successful. What is required is the ability to think, to push yourself, to make sensible decisions (like not overloading yourself with debt), and to make yourself into a valuable employee.

There are certain courses that we want prospective employees to have undertaken (law, engineering, medicine etc) but this is specific to those occupations. Going to uni because you don't want to enter the workforce yet or some other innane reason is not the right reason to go.

Agree with this article entirely.

Getting any kind of job these days requires some kind of training. in fact, unskilled jobs are few and far between and are hard to get because well,there are to many unskilled workers out there.

with so many manufacturing jobs going overseas, what are the people who would otherwise be employed in these industries supposed to do? the only choice is to get trained in something and university is one option.Another is getting trained by an employer willing to take inexperienced people on <good luck>.

apprenticeships are hard to get, even with a skills shortage. have you ever spoken to a kid trying to get a plumbing and electrician apprenticeship? there are many frustrated youngsters out there.

the problem lies with the nature of our society. we are so technologically advanced that no-one can keep up, everyone is expendable (or so some moronic employers think).

For decades I supported the notion that any youth should be encouraged to pursue a trade if it suited their goals and temperament.

I only realised my tragic error when I shared a house for six months with an 18-year-old trade apprentice.

This kid was working 12-hour days while being paid for 8 hour days.

He was regularly exposed to dangerous inhaled chemicals with no protective equipment. In fact, regulation safety gear was almost unknown on the worksite.

If employees took a day off sick during cricket season, they had a day's wage docked because the foreman assumed they had chucked a sickie.

One morning, I watched this poor bugger hobbling to work with tears in his eyes, because he had been bitten by a bee (to which he was allergic) and his foot was swollen like a football. To take the day off would mean the sack.

I naively asked why he didn't get the union involved. Put simply, talking to the union would mean being blackballed and an end to his apprenticeship.

This is the state of Australia's apprenticeship scheme, and the reason I would encourage all young people to avoid trades and aim for uni, even if they're unsuited.

Some interesting posts :)

I agree that it is important to ensure that all kids have the chance to go uni, if it suits them, and if their intended job requires a degree. One of the reasons behind increases in uni intakes would have to be encouragement at the highschool level. Particularly in senior highschool we were told that if you didnt go to uni, you were wasting your life and earning opportunities. To me, this way of thinking channels a lot of unsuitable people towards further studies.

Ideally even though careers that do require a degree should seek to utilise cadetships as much as possible. When taking my first short-term job in my industry, I was told that the only thing I needed from uni was the very first unit of study - how true that was! If I'd been able to access a cadetship (now common in the industry), not only owuld the govt not have had to fork out for Austudy during my time at uni, but I'd have had the practical on the job experience to make me a very useful employee at the end of me degree (which incidentally is a pre-requisite to career advancement, despite not actually containing anything useful).

As an employer I totally agree with the idea that an employee with a degree would be a major asset to my business, providing they have considerable work experience in field related to what I do. Trouble is many new graduates can't find jobs when they leave because they have not been trained properly to handle the corporate world at Uni and end up like most of my neighbours and friends children, working in areas unrelated to their qualification for less money.

I know that i am not alone in the business world when I say thet most employer like me prefer older staff with the desire to gain tertiary experience at their expense. I have some older women who have completed qualifications at Uni that have been loyal staff and friends that have grown my business and have a loyal customer following. My competitors with their young graduates have had problems keeping them and they have little or no knowledge on how to deal with customers. If they get 2 years out of them their lucky, I have had 12 years and counting from mine. Great article and i agree.

Would you want a doctor learning on the job on you?

"Is university necessary for all?"
No it is not, because not everyone wants to go to university. Having said that, that does not change a proper education is a basic human right and need. Irrespective of whether we pay for it a few times over and over.
The writer Rennie won't come out directly and say what his real agenda is and that is 'education for the rich' or 'the elite.' The possibilities are there today for the worlds population to live properly in health and comfort. But the governments are not going to allow that to happen. They are going to continue and sharpen up the decades long assault on wages and conditions. To drive living standards down even further. Whilst a small ruling class, a financial aristocracy wallows in obscene levels of wealth and luxury, always at the expense of the majority.
"universities are dumbing down their standards to attract more students."
What the writer neglects to mention, is that education is being turned into a big money spinner. So they have extended class sizes and instigated cuts in services. But at the same time that venal process undermines education.

Kenny yes. Thats how they get their experience. Both my father in Changi as a prisioner of war and my mother in New guinea nursed our troops during WW2. The lessons they recieved their helped them better understand how to deal with paients and with doctors. Mother is ninty-three and still gets cards for special events from former patients, even though she retired over forty years ago.

Interesting article and posts.

As a former uni director I too came up with list along the lines of stevenlmeyers post.

We improved the unemployment figures
We were an adult creche
We offered psychological counselling services
We decoded assignments where students couldn't spell or know the grammar rules
We were training people for the service sector

Whitlam threw open the uni doors and made education free for the boomers in the hope that a more educated population would improve GDP.

It didn't improve GDP a bit but it did give people the opportunity to express their opinions in a more vocal and articulate manner. The art of convincing people is another matter entirely.

I agree with the general thrust of the article. Someone wrote a very good online article a week or so about the building trade and apprentices. We need to raise the monetary incentives for the trades and destigmatise the trade sector.

There are far, far, far too many universities and university students in Australia. Every single one of those Dawkin's Universities is a waste of time and money. Universities are for the very brightest and most highly academically motivated. Most of what is taught at the Dawkins Universities is just group therapy.

You're obviously ignorant of the qualitative differences in the growth of the job market in recent times. Please look it up (I believe the ABS has the numbers). Almost all job growth in the last decade has been in sectors that require degrees or associate degrees. There has been almost no growth in the number of jobs for trades people. Thus the getting more people into university has been a good idea.

when you say that inexperienced people with a uni degree are no use to you, i wonder if inexperienced people with no degree are more useful.

employers want productive people from day 1. they don't care where they get their experience and training, "not my problem".

this is capitalism in a nut-shell: keep the profits, dump the expenses on society. the result is a government that starves education, and tries to supply a workforce with imported people. all the while complaining about useless young people- since employers have to be smart enough to know about basic cause-and-effect, i presume they are blinded by personal self-interest.

Considering the trade deficient, then universities have not been successful in reducing that.

The idea that trade work is satisfying is not necessarily the case, particularly if you find yourself in a trade that you may not particularly like, but an apprenticeship in that trade was the only one you could find at the time.

I have worked with numerous men who had a trade, but they left their trade because they did not like it or were not greatly suited to it.

Having a trade certificate is no longer sufficient in many companies, and at least an AD is required to do some of the interesting work and be paid more. Also greenfield type companies will seek a multi-skilled workforce, so having 2 or more trades or having many tickets is the means to be paid more, or be employed by those companies.

I’m also sure that the author knows that most trade work is being carried out by males. There are very few girls entering trade work, except for trades such as hair dressing or chef work. So if the boys do trades, then the universities are filled with girls, but they generally do not do science courses.

Higher Education is not Higher Education if ALL can pass the exams. At a university level perhaps on the top quartile should realise admittance, but ALL must have equal access at a reasonal cost. ALL should not be capable of university passing on statistical grounds alone. How can someone with an IQ of 95 perform calculus, if required.

Dawkins and Nelson have wrecked a good system by combining universities and Colleges of Advanced Education [D] and supporting the Commercialisation of Universitities [D]. Dumbing down papers towards textbook reproduction has not helped. How can school teachers who achieved TERs {UAI?} of say 60-70, deal the emergence of query based curricula, when they could not handle the "hard stuff", when they were students themselves?

Plagarism is not severely punished. Herein, I feel, unlike ACIC Commissioner, the University of Newcastle academics who covered-up international student plagiary incident should have been given their green slips.

The above said, continuing education has its valuable place in both the HE and VET sectors. The old AQF Advance Diploma level was a good VET guide. Basic achievement at university should exceed the highest AQF reqirments

Definitely not ! Univesity education, like singing contests on TV, should be the preserve of people with REAL talents.
AUSTRALIAN IDOL is to music what UNIVERSITY is to journalism.
Media owners have a neo liberal economics agenda which journalsits support to keep their jobs whilst outside election time these journalists are anti Catholic on social and moral issues the rest of the time. What a pact for those wh are second fiddle to the more intelligent place getters at University who become doctors, engineers and architects, eh.

In the dim past scholarships enabled the most dedicated although disadvataged students into uni. Employers offered cadetships when they required their employees to have a greater knowledge in a subject or study.
To expect only govt to supply the needs of industry does not work, industry must take equal responsibility.
I for one found a cadetship in mech engineering was not my bag, left the job and found aircraft engineering more acceptable, doing a job I loved and study supplied by a tech college one day a fortnight and nightschool to satisfy my ambitions, it kept me off the streets too.
Employers have expected uni's and techs to supply their individual emplyee needs, this not possible given that no industry is exacly the same as another.
Employer involvement in education of their workforce has many advantages, longer and more dedication being just one.
I agree with posters who say uni ed has much good to offer our society
and the past fifty years is proof of that, it is time to now redefine its purpose, not being able to get a plumber is a good reason to change something.
fluff4
excellent article and great posts

Talk by Father( & Dr) Ian Ker, at Notre Dame University,Broadway, Sydney on Thursday 13th September 2007 @ 7:30 p.m.

Subject: Newman's Idea of a University: Is Catholic Education a Contradiction in Terms?

Newman broadly held the following ideas:

The are 7 discourses from 1852 from Newman about the characteristics that make up the idea of a university according to his developing Catholic thought.
People confused by 'liberal education' & misunderstand the term in relation to our prevailing culture.
A university living within colleges. Wanted the Heads of colleges and not Rectors to have more say.
First Discourse "Theology- a branch of Knowledge".
Third Discourse:" Bearing of other branches of knowledge on theology". Catholic Christian theology is a branch of knowledge.
Rejected the individualist attitude in education stemming from the Enlightenment.

Ethical truths cannot be discovered by the grossly immoral or amoral person.
1843 collection on Epistomology.
To think clearly is not enough. Power of distinguishing priorities, ethical & moral content from subject to subject, evaluation & judgment. Memory & imagination is not enough either. A mind may be lucid & logical but still indecisive on ethical & moral questions.
Policy of non-committment, lack of principle/view(liberal dogma & practice has 'moveable principles' and this is found not only in secular universities but also disturbingly within some Catholic universities.
Private Judgment pushes a false sovereignity from one branch of knowledge/or discipline over & above that of another.
Fr Ker then went on to explore the ideas of Professor Plantinga:
Scholarship cannot be neutral according to Professor Alvin Plantinga, University of Notre Dame ( USA)'s Dept of Philosophy. Plantinga, a Protestant scholar says that naturalistic philosophies from Epicurus influences liberal Protestant theologies & also the Enlightenment.
One branch of knowledge using its own thought forms & vocabulary then foisting it upon other branches of knowledge within universities and schools is contrary to Newman's thought.
Ancient philosophy from Pythagoras & more modern ones from Kant have the conception of the world being made by "man as the measure of all things". Don Cupitt explicitly atheist; Richard Rorty says there is not truth.

part 2 from my previous post:
Replacing Divine with human creativity- enlightenment epistemology ie 'truth as it appears to me'. No committment to objective truth; nor even to relative truth.
Contemporary intellectuals are into deconstructionism. Catholic students are influenced by the emphasis & the way in which subjects are taught. Professor Plantinga science & scholarship has become what I can get away with saying in a particular time and place( the cynical view of Rorty). Constructing the world's structure by the use of words; also evolutionary myths- unproven theories parading as proven fact.

Dawkins as a naturalist is not neutral in his line of argumenation. Professor Platinger says this about Dawkins in more general terms in his essay on the impossibility of neutrality in the university.
There is moveover no 'superior neutrality' at university- that is a myth.
Father Richard McBrien made the ridiculously banal statement that a Catholic university is "one with a chapel".
Professor Platinga on the other hand is the only one at Notre Dame University ( USA), who as a Protestant amongst Catholics who is actually supporting the traditional Catholic philosophies on what a Catholic Univesity should be ! Plantinga says that no university can be or play act that it is somehow neutral and/or disengaged.

FR Ian Ker has observed and concluded that at many Catholic universities today there are incoherent positions/disperate creeds/dogmatic non-Catholic credalists in most faculty departments eg literatire depts, Sociology, Philosophy. FR Ker recalled a Professor at Catholic Maynooth University in Ireland who accused him, who was visting as a guest speaker there, of being 'sectarian' for raising the issues in this talk. This was done during the 'vote of thanks' LOL. This is an indication that any search for truth and objectivity is seen as a threat. The Maynooth Professor during his strange 'vote of thanks' to Dr /Fr Ian Ker compared what Fr Ker was saying to the situation of Northern Ireland sectarianism ! As if to say that Fr Ker should not seek objective truth and order in university intellectual discourse

One thing is certain, a large proportion of university students are almost illiterate. I can say this with authority having taught undergraduates and graduates in health science and education.

Last week I marked a couple of hundred undergraduate papers for a "Dawkins" university and many of the students could hardly put a grammatical sentence together. The other two markers had the same experience. The saddest thing is that while we were marking them down for poor grammar, the lecturer was continuing to produce lecture notes with frequent grammatical errors.

If the university experience is to be meaningful, useful, respected, and value-for-money, the entry requirements need to be far tougher. The present cynical attitude adopted by university administrators whereby they take students' money and "pass" them without sufficient regard to the quality of teaching or learning is a disgrace.

The advantage of the Great Divergence was that Hunmankind learned how to learn. Apply theory to application. Yes, universities are necessary, but the lecturers/professors should have some mandatory years of work experience like with TAFE. I have worked 23 years in Industry, taught at uni and TAFE and twice have been an Academic Director over 15 years.

webby insightful, that sounds like how it used to be though huh? I had some contact with a seminary some time ago and was most impressed by the trainees perceptions. But they were not there after 7 years.

Today I think they,re for a career or industry now, once what the last poster was postulating. There in no doubt that university has changed, not necessarily for worst or better just changed.

The lack of literacy is to be mourned, as again the last poster said, but I think it is not the lecturers job to teach those skills, it belongs in the highschool and the interest in language begins in primary.
I remember an argument I had many years ago, with a primary teacher from one of the toughest areas of Sydney, she applauded the scrapping of punctuation, along with phrazing etc. How one would get thru life without that learning I puzzled.
Modern "speak" is not goodenough for uni even when studying mechanics in my humble. The lack of good communication was another friends job to fix in hospitals.
It starts early, a kicker could be the "Adventures of English" on TV
bloody facinating! and kids love TV in school hours.
fluff4

This article, and some of the comments, reminds me of getting my wrists slapped for suggesting back in the early 1990s that a barely literate undergraduate student consider taking up a trade, rather than wasting everybody's time and energy trying to complete a university degree.

I gave up teaching some years ago, and I hope that student took my advice. The idea that everybody is both capable of undertaking university studies successfully, and needs to do so in order to be a productive member of society, was always hopelessly flawed.