Fifty percent of students don't use their skill in their career because their involving jobs are no longer available. It is a waste of education. Furthermore, their average starting wages are lower than those 2009 graduates. Thus, they tend to default their student loans. However, some of them further their study in higher level because they want to get a better job when the economic is upstream. An expert said that it is better to find a new job if the one you have offer low salary. “If you don’t move within five years of graduating, for some reason you get stuck where you are. That’s just an empirical finding,” (2011,¶21)
In Thailand, we also have this problem because employers need more vocational workers whereas students prefer study in universities. Those who finished vocational school have plenty of jobs available for them. Thais need to change their attitude toward vocational education in order to moving forward their industrial potential. Usually, parents will not allow their children to further their study at vocational schools because they disapprove vocational students. Vocational students fight against their rival schools’ students. Government should deal with this problem to guarantee the safety of students. Also, government may provide a large amount of money to improve the quality of vocational schools.
References
Rambell C. (2011, May 18).Many With New College Degree Find the Job Market Humbling. NY times. Retrieved May 22, 2011 from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/business/economy/19grads.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=business
Pree
ReplyDeleteI think the reason that vocational school is not a good choice for children. In Thai society, they give more credit to the one who graduate and have degree from university. Higher degree you can get is one of important thing to support you to success in your future career. It’s hard to change their attitude because in the reality, students who graduated from vocational school always work in labor career which pay less salary. I don’t say that they can’t be success but they can’t get higher wage if compare with the one who graduate from university and have more chance to work in the management line.
I don’t think each government take it seriously about the fighting against the other rival students because this problem’s been continuing since I was born and it’s not fixed until now. This is one of the important reasons why parents don’t want their children to study in vocational schools.
I think it is one of social value in Thailand that parent doesn't want children to study in vocational school because it doesn't have a good standard that make people are confident when they graduated from vocational school, it is hard to seek jobs which are high salary rate. Also, most of environment at school doesn’t guarantee the security for children such as drug controversy crime, so parent doesn't ensure offspring might be changed behavior to bad student and not success in their education.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, government should provide vocational training to people who are interested in order to response labor's needs in agriculture, industry and so on. It helps people who are unemployed and develop potentiality to meet market demand. I think it is easier than changing quality of vocational school.
The students who go to a college or university benefit greatly from that, so why should tax payers be forced to pay for universities or colleges?
ReplyDeleteHarvard, the best in the world, is privately funded, not a forced charity exercise. If something is really good, people will happily pay for the product, including an excellent education.
Why does everyone thing governments should interfere to force people to do things? Parents who want a good education will pay for it, and they are the people who should pay since their children benefit from it. I think government support for universities and colleges is immoral - it's stealing people's money to force them to support something that they do not want to support, and in many cases is not worth supporting - a lot universities everywhere are pretty awful and not worth keeping. It would be better to let tehm fail, but if some people want to go there and pay the fees, then they will survive.
Peter
ReplyDeleteIf government don't support for universities, most universities might be closed. My faculty(commerce) can earn more money than other faculty. We get money from donation and direct examination fees. We can live on whether governtment support us or not. However, other faculties such as social administration don't have enough money to provide education themself. Most of students are from middle income's families. They can't afford to pay more tuition fee.
In contrast, I agree that some universities are terrible. They didn't deserve government budget.
Pree,
ReplyDeleteIf people do not want to support them willingly, I think that means people don't want them. If people do not want them and do not think they should exist, why should governments use force to make people support things they think should not exist?
Good universities exist because they do something that people think is important and worth supporting - they do research, they educate, and so on. If bad universities do none of these things at a standard that people are willing to pay for or donate to, why should they kept going by forced charity by governments?
Good universities want to, and need to, attract the best students, so they offer scholarships to those who are good but can't afford the fees. The fees are then paid for by those who can afford it and who want to go to the good university to study law, social science, medicine, philosophy, engineering, Latin, or whatever.
Perhaps another mistake is to think that the only or even main reason for anyone going to university is to get a job later. If that is all people want out of a university, they should certainly be willing to, and expected to, pay the full cost themselves since they are only going their to profit themselves financially.
I love philosophy, but I don't think other people who don't love it should be forced to pay for me to study it or keep it alive in university departments. And no one studies philosophy to make a career of it - although it does seem to correlate with very successful careers in business, law, and other fields where thinking is a useful skill. (Studying philosophy also correlates with higher language skills.)
Peter
ReplyDeleteI agree with you idea that we should offer scholarships to good students. Also, it's wrong idea that many people think that they will get a job after they graduate.
Nontheless,we still need some workers on many fields that is not popular. How can they produce new gradutes without fund?
If there are too few workers in a field, their salaries will increase because of the demand. That will encourage more people to study the temporarily unpopular fields.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I think a better answer is that people study things because they think those things are worth studying and they want to know more in that field - I agree wtih you that it is not primarily to get a job later, except perhaps for professions, and there will be no shortage of graduates in professions such as law, medicine and engineering because they are both intellectually rewarding and directly financially rewarding.
Unrewarding (except financially) things like business administration should not be encouraged, but if people want them, they should be allowed to pay for them.
What field do you think might not have enough workers if people had to pay their own fees to study?
Peter
ReplyDeleteDo you think that capitalism is always the best thing? America is one of the most Economic liberalism. However, they still have a serious problem such as subprime crisis. This problem occur because US government don't regulate banks and let them provide loans to everyone that want loans. They have a problem with corperate governance too. To illustate, Enron company(energy company) went bankrupt in 2001 because the ceo of the company faked the number of their profit.
Teaching, social administration, environnmental science, nursing may not have enough workers.
ReplyDeletePree,
ReplyDeleteI like your example of the subprime crisis, but I don't agree with your analysis.
The problem arose not because the government did not regulate, but for the opposite reason - the government regulated and therefore had an obligation to bail the banks out when they were irresponsible, and that tempted the banks to make bad decisions. If the banks were free and independent, they would have known they had to pay for their failures and they would have been far more cautious, and their shareholders would have demanded greater caution in their lending and other activities. Prudence and carefulness have always been capitalist virtues, not socialist virtues, and prudence and carefulness would have prevented the subprime crisis, which occurred because of government interference which made the banks imprudent and careless. Capitalism would have worked better than government regulation to prevent the subprime crisis.
I don't think that capitalism is perfect, because people are not perfect, but in practice as well in principle, it is better than every alternative, as the success of the US and other capitalist countries shows when compared to non-capitalist nations. It's similar to democracy - it's the worst sort of government except for every other sort of government (Winston Churchill).
Enron's problem was not capitalism, it was, as you note, criminal fraud, and it is definitely the government's job to control and punish such crimes as fraud, theft and lying. (I'm not against governments, just against unjustified government interference that violates basic human rights.)
I'm pretty sure that people would willingly pay much higher salaries for good teachers, nurses and environmental scientists, which would attract people into those career areas. And those seem like areas that people study not for the money but for love, and would pay for the privilege to study in those fields if they had to. And as paying customers, they would be in a stronger position to tell their lecturers to do a better job of teaching. And as paying customers they would probably also be more critical of the quality of the university's performance, and I think that is a good thing for everyone, including the university, which is pushed to do a better job.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about social administration, but if there was a demand for people with those skills, why wouldn't people study it, and why wouldn't other people offer scholarships to study it? If no one thinks it's worth paying for, is it really needed by anyone?
People like Bill Gates and the other great (usually American, and almost always (always?) capitalist) philanthropists of the world are happy to put a lot of money into things that they feel are valuable and should be promoted.