DEGREE VS VOCATIONAL TRAINING

 

Higher or vocational education? Higher education for masses or for the elite?

In the last years the idea that higher education can actually be considered a bubble took shape and is increasingly brought to debate. In more and more countries there are dozens of students graduating and instead of entering the workforce, they go straight to unemployment.

With some notable exceptions (like Computing, Medicine etc.) there are a lot of degrees that hold little value for the student after graduation, especially in developing countries (I am including here Romania, my country). In some holding a degree is a requirement merely because you "learn how to learn", regardless of the topic of your studies. The quality of the courses is often lacking and the graduates are simply unemployable if they do not get a part-time job or volunteer in an organisation during their studies.

Unemployment of youth in some countries is getting higher than ever, with Spain topping at a whooping 54% rate.

Moreover, in other countries students also pile a lot of debt which they cannot sometimes repay, and they are stuck with thousands of dollars/euros that have to be payed back in a lot of years.

On the other hand, there are a few countries like Germany, Switzerland, Finland or Sweden where vocational education is very solid. Students are divided based on their academic results (which indeed raises a lot of ethical and liberty questions) so the best can pursue a higher education degree, the others a technical degree, then vocational schools and so on. This way most of graduates can easily find employment and also get a qualification that they can use to start earning money.

What do you think governments should endorse in the future? Should the education system be reformed so vocational training is highly encouraged and higher education is reserved only for the best students? How? Or should higher education be made available on an even larger scale for as many students as possible, prefferably at the lowest costs for the students?

 http://www.ted.com/conversations/10981/higher_or_vocational_education.html Click here to see the original article