I have two children in Year 11 this year and they have no idea what they want to choose as a career path although they both say that they want a University degree? They are both academic and are good at pretty much everything, they avoided Science subjects as electives as they found Science so boring that they couldn't bring themselves to do it and have picked more Business focused subjects. But they don't know what career path they want to persue. They both say that the haven't had enough life experience to know what they want to do.

One wants to take a year off and go overseas but surely they still have to decide what they want to do as once the year off is over - then what? What do kids do when they find themselves in this situation?

YOu read the University books etc and there is so much in them and so many courses that you cant help but wonder whether they are any good, are of a high standard and whether they are really worthwhile and what sort of jobs do they allow you to do?

It is very confusing for parents when the children seek guidance and assistance and the whole thing is confusing.

I cant help but wonder with regard to the questions that are said should be asked, Who do you ask these questions to?

I think the argument is about whether you get what you pay for. Uni's are not a scarce resource, fee paying students are. What is scarce in some unis and tafes is a full disclosure about the health of their organisation.

If you pay $60,000 for a science degree, one would think that you'd get $60,000 worth of value plus enough education so that you can either carry on to do post graduate or doctoral studies or go out in to industry and do research.

It's fairly clear that some educational providers are laying on the spin.

The comment about patents is a good one.

It looks as though the problems in unis have changed. When I went, I found that while the courses were well-structured and well-taught, the course content did not equip you for the outside world at all. Unis were great if you wanted to do a higher degree as an academic, but pretty ordinary otherwise.

I've still got folders and folders worth of notes from my uni courses that I've never looked at since sitting the exams in those subjects. What a waste of time and effort!

Cheryl, in my experience the smartest people out in the field with PhD's were the one who had done their basic degrees, gone to work in their chosen field for a while to get some feel for what the real world was like and then did their Doctorate. There probably isn't too much wrong with a school leaver taking a year off and working in a few different areas before deciding on a career, preferably without a parent pushing.

One of the prerequisites for studying science is that the student needs to have an inquiring mind. An ability to think laterally is also very useful. A lot of basic science is fairly boring, particularly as dispensed by poor teachers, but without a good grasp of the basics, further progress will be difficult.

My field was analytical chemistry. I got the impression that while the universities taught the basics, most of the really practical applications happened out in the laboratories of the real world. Of course, the word "University" covers a lot of institutions which nowadays should better be described as "Institutes of Technology" if they were honest about it.

David

I am currently at university and I feel like I have been well and truly ripped off. I study journalism and within the last couple of years the university has axed our university newspaper, failed to provide enough quality equipment, amalgamated our courses, reduced tutorials from weekly to fortnightly and are continuing to casualise staff. What should be an exciting, practical degree is poorly run with the view of saving every single dollar they can. I will finish my study because I have only a short time left, but if I ever wanted to be journalist this degree has certainly given me doubts.

The issue is that many students feel like they need a degree if they want to get a job, no matter what that degree is. They put up with the poor standard of education, grind through the boring years of poorly managed courses so that they can come out the other end with their piece of paper.

I go to what is supposed to be the most prestigous university in Queensland. If this University is supposed to be one of the best I have real doubts as to the quality of tertiary education across Australia.

I had the same problem Jolanda. When my son bought home some brochures from a range of unis, they all looked pretty good. He had done some research online and was advised by one senior lecturer to do a hybrid master degree. It had elements of photography, writing and multimedia.

The lecturer said that he could get a job in the film industry or corporate sector but the problem is that while he's an expert web designer, his degree says 'creative media' (might have been Media Arts) which doesn't mean much.

I've since found a website that lists universities by research but this doesn't help us much now and it doesn't help my son much now that he's $30K in debt.

How do international students make sense of all of this?