Writing Samples

Many courses for few jobs
by Kevin Dowler

Trying to find a job is one of the toughest jobs in today’s world.

Completing high school doesn’t even get you into college, anymore.

College and university prices and expectations have gone way up. Talk to any Prof today and you’ll be credited with illiteracy even with a grade 12 English course under your belt.

Not that professors are very literate either. When was the last time you sat down for a relaxing afternoon of thesis paper reading?

Talk about jargon and overkill. A college graduate’s paper will, in 10 pages, tell about an idea that could be written in one paragraph if all of the stuffy intellectual words were left out.

And what really gets my goat is that with all their education hanging out all over themselves, they have the gall to offer us more courses.

Next time you have the chance, pick up a college calendar and check out some of the jobs now requiring education.

Janitors, chambermaids, bus boys, landscapers, stable boys, and short order cooks all have the opportunity to go to college today.

Where else is the student loan and grant money going to go without courses like these.

As long as government grants and a need for information exists, colleges will continue offering courses like these.

By paying big bucks and going to college, a person can get training for a job which might have otherwise been opened to those only previously trained, college registrars say, justifying their courses.

Employers like it as much as the colleges do. Business owners save lost time which would have been spent training new workers and the college collects the fees.

By taking the Life Skills course, which teaches its students more than how to tie their own shoes while living in the big city, a student learns how to budget for the next two years while paying off the student loan the college registrar arranged for him so he’d be able to take the course.

Also in the course is a section on handling hucksters and hustlers.

Filling in job applications is also part of the course which teaches its students how to find a job.

I can imagine the proud face of the course’s instructor watching over the shoulder of a student successfully filling in his latest unemployment application form.

The courses may not be the accounting, law or education courses of yesterday, but they offer security and integrity to many of today’s lower paying jobs.

It’s no joke to students though. The courses are filled and continue to be repeated.

By offering these courses, the colleges are meeting a need.

But whose need?

The college’s need to fill its bank account which is in need of student dollars to pay for college staff.

The success of these courses can only be measured in the number of students employed from the training.

Spending months in college and spending money on a course that costs more than the eventual job pays, seems to me like a scam to benefit the colleges only.

The education gained at college should be valuable information well worth the money it costs, not just another piece of paper to build egos on.

Today’s employers need to hire the people behind the diplomas and degrees, not the paper some choose to stand behind.