Education vs. Aspiration

The requirement of today's labour market is as such that in order for a graduate to be able to find a job, he/she must have a very specialised degree. This is justified by the need to be able to assimilate the graduate into the company's systems without much training.

A graduate is expected to have a proper grounding of the working systems in his/her field. For example, an engineer should be able to do scheme checks and be able to see design/calculation flaws when he/she is handed a job. And IT graduate should be able to learn and master a new programming language at minimal time, and a teacher should be able to teach without much training.

Therefore, as students, kids nowadays have to really master his/her skill and gain proper grounding before he/she is thrown out into the playing field. And this requires much focus. If one is not focused enough, then one can never be good enough. There is no room for slackers in this world, and only the strong will survive. It's either you come in and assimilate straight away, or you're not good enough.

But graduates constantly find themselves knowing too little. In order to get good grades in Uni, most devote their time to everything regarding thier studies and have no time for anything else. Therefore, we actually have graduates that know nothing more than their specialised field of study. An IT specialist will know all about the programming languages that defines his/her career. When asked about some logical workings of the society that they live in, they know very little or nothing at all! This becomes paradoxical intelligence. They can be so smart in designing software, but they do not know the implications of its usage in the society out there. Therefore, you get stupid designs that are executed intelligently.

Graduates nowadays come out to the labour market knowing next to nothing about human interaction, social implications, and proper communication. All they know is how to do a job, but they do not know what the job is for, how it would affect the community outside, and why it is good. Just look at the roads in Malaysia. It's all in a mess. And the more the Government tries to rectify the flaws in the design of the roads, the more chaos it creates. People spend more time on roads nowadays because the designers are only busy looking at their physical calculations without calculating other factors like how many people will be dislocated if you move a junction 100 metres away. By moving a junction 100 metres away, that could cause a good few thousand cars everyday to spend an extra 10 minutes on the road instead of getting parked at thier intended destinations. The more time cars spend on the road, the more congested the system gets.

Scientist only know their science and research. Designers only know their designs, marketers only know their products, but no one understands human behaviour. Only the sociolologist knows how human behave, and what does a sociologist do? He spends most of his time studying people.

So becareful of why you graduate, not how you graduate.