Once upon a time in the distant past, perhaps 20 years ago, a university education was a rare commodity, and a university degree — especially a masters degree or a doctorate — had real currency in the workforce. My parents knew that the possessors of such qualifications would get good jobs and could rightfully expect a good salary in return for all those years of study.
“You’re smart, son, make the most of yourself, go to university.” I’m sure I heard this advice on more than one occasion in my teens and 20s. Today this expectant attitude persists, and many a good son and daughter heed their parents’ advice to get the best education and go to university. But is this really good advice? Or is it time for prospective students to take a closer look at what a skeptic might call inferior education masquerading as the “best educational option”?
To be fair, university courses that make you a professional with a fixed job description, such as a doctor, a lawyer, a dentist, an industrial chemist, a mechanical engineer, a veterinarian, a dental technician or a nurse, remain valuable currency. In contrast, a degree from the more generalized fields of arts or sciences doesn’t make you an artist or a scientist. It doesn’t make you an artist’s smock or a scientist’s sock.
Your job prospects at graduation are what you make them. Exactly the same as your prospects before you started studying. Your university fees for three to four years give you access to a variety of novel ideas presented in the easy-to-digest format of a lecture. In this time you will be pushed gently to ponder, ruminate and discuss, but you will be free to sit at the back of the class and avoid interaction. Regardless of strategy, you have a high probability of meeting your life partner. On the balance sheet, a little expensive but probably money well spent — an intellectual version of a Club Med holiday.
The real problem comes if you are indeed intelligent, do show some flair and feel that you have the intellectual rigor, enthusiasm, stamina and, last but not least, money to devote yourself to three to five extra years of postgraduate studies. The cost in time and money is significant but appears to be balanced by the intellectual satisfaction of being recognized as having the potential to become a world-class scientist or academic.
Unfortunately, the reality is that the vast majority of young postgraduate scholars are not world-class material. They are intelligent, competent technicians that fulfill research projects presented by senior, experienced members of staff who are too busy with their teaching workload to perform the necessary experiments themselves. Unannounced is the statistic that every year, in Taiwan and Japan, universities produce more doctorates and masters of science graduates than can be employed.
As with every commodity, over-supply devalues the product. Unfortunately, the products of university postgraduate training programs are not boxes or cars or mobile phones but intelligent young people who have been led to believe that their intellectual contribution is important — the implication being that they will be able to continue research after graduation.
Unfortunately, only half of this statement is true. Their contribution to knowledge is often important and their fees are important to university budgets, but the majority will not be able to pursue research or find employment that will enable them to use their skills and knowledge. This is analogous to graduating doctors, lawyers or veterinarians and then denying half of them the opportunity to practice.
How does such a wasteful, degrading system endure? Where is the informed consumer?
To answer the first question: Universities and the science industry play a big part in maintaining the status quo. It is well recognized that the perpetual availability of “graduate bench fodder” has evolved to sustain the productivity of university research laboratories.
Professors and those who have come through this system have little opportunity or desire to make reforms that will ultimately increase their workload, decrease their productivity and reduce funding competitiveness. Recent doctoral graduates that don’t find employment do not have a voice, do not have an organization and can never be heard over the well-rehearsed university and industry choruses that constantly, and very often justly, sing, write and advertise homage to scientific advancement.
The existing system of scientific advancement requires the continuous sacrifice of large numbers of its young.
Where is the informed consumer? Hopefully, they are on their way. Potential university students need to carefully weigh the pros and cons of generalized university education.
Those considering higher degrees should be aware that many will graduate to be unemployable, deeply dissatisfied and depressed.
In addition, they will retain considerable debt.
Peter Osborne is a guest professor of neuroscience in the Department of Life Science at National Dong Hwa University.
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