Recently, at work, I got around to reading articles about whether or not a degree would guarantee success. Obviously this triggered me, because the more I read, the more incensed I got.
Warning: Swears below. Proceed with caution.
Reporters were throwing statistics like how the average graduate salary was that of $3,000+, which was insane. Had they never actually talked to a graduate before? How the f___ is this true? It’s only true if you studied law or are in a field that was in demand. As far as I knew, they obtained the numbers from a survey, a survey that only the most “successful” graduates would answer because they knew that they were doing better than everyone else.
There was also another article that reported fresh liberal arts grads were getting $3,000 when they started their first job. This is not possible, and yet, this was printed. Sadly, I was unable to trace the article that cited this, because all of my close friends and I encountered no such thing.
But citing this example is only the tip of the iceberg. The real problem is that parents, teachers, and so many people tell young students that a university is the key to success. That you had to do well in school, go to university, graduate, get a job, marry, have kids and somehow make all the money. The promise, however implicit it was, reiterated to me many times.
“Don’t be like me. Neh go university. Neh get degree then now cannot get promoted.” — my father.
“Aiya, why you dowan to do Law?” — my mother.
“Here at [insert university here], we guarantee you opportunities…. blablabla… something about being ready for the workforce.”
Me: Okay. Sounds good. But no, I can’t be a lawyer.
Fast forward to my graduation, and I discovered that no one wanted to hire someone without experience. It really wasn’t about my degree and how I had written awesome thesis papers; they wanted me to have experience in the field, which was something I didn’t have; I encountered the catch-22 of needing experience in order to get a job that has experience, but, at the same time, even internships that helped you get experience also preferred people with experience.
So my job search kinda looked like this, sans the zen garden and the Mr Miyagi-type mentor:
What really grinds my gears is that this problem, the surplus of university graduates, is caused by many people, parents, teachers, politicians and of course, the marketing teams of universities, have all fed us this idea that going to university will set you for life. It won’t. You can be successful even if you went to a technical college, a polytechnic, or didn’t even complete your O levels because you were done with the system’s formulaic ways of evaluating your abilities.
The kind of university graduates who are deemed successful are a certain type of people who fit a certain mould; as far as I know, life is open-ended (at least, when you graduate from school), and you make a lot of decisions that will determine the kind of successes you get. There is more than one way of being successful, and it doesn’t involve living your parents’ surrogate dreams. (Sorry Mum and Dad.)
Oh and here’s another trigger; the people who tell students this turn around and label the younger generation “entitled and spoiled millennials,” but these ideas of being able to get a job easily after graduation has been perpetuated by them in the first place. Sure, they have different agendas, but this distorts students’ perspectives because they perceive getting a degree to be the key to this vague and nebulous idea called Success In Life.
So what’s my solution to this? Let’s do it three ways.
- Stop making getting a degree sound so prestigious. It’s merely a means to an end. Certain companies value degrees from a certain discipline, so go get one if you wish to join said company. If you’re looking into a career in filmmaking, go look for an internship. You don’t need a degree in filmmaking, but I guess it’s nice to have. You know, if you can make it rain.
- Stop selling universities and university life as something that will open doors. Because it’s not. You go there to learn stuff. You see that so-called self-actualised person who climbed Mount Everest after she graduated? Yeah, this is something she probably did on her own, and her university had nothing to do with it. She probably did it on her own and joined an expedition. Frame university for what it is; some means to an end, not the solution to social mobility or finding success in life.
- Lastly, for students: find out what you want to do, and what you can do to help yourself get there. Find out which career suits your skill set and personality, gather contacts to help you find a job, and go for networking sessions. Learning to market yourself and writing a proper resumé is important, too. Don’t rely on schools to teach you this; ask around for help because there is no shame in doing that.
You know what I wish I had done when I graduated? All of that and above and an internship. Then finding out what I was suited for and what I was willing to do would have been less arduous than buying into this unrealistic picture of success I had created for myself.
Featured image via Margolum Smargol