Your degree is useless unless you can use it in a meaningful way
It doesn’t matter where you received your education, or what it says on your university diploma. It also doesn’t always matter what you know, or what you look like. These things do not lead to a job, and companies advertising for jobs do not usually look for these things.
You need to show your future employer that you have a trade. By “trade” I mean a practical, useful set of skills and knowledge that can be used to further the competitive advantage of your future employer. Such skills could include writing, accounting, applied statistics, human relations skills and more. You need to know what kind of “trade” you can offer your future employer, whether that employer be business, government or a non-profit.
Many students (and professors) foolishly believe that university is all about learning. Unfortunately, this assumption is misguided.
Yes, university is a place of learning. But it is also so much more. Universities are where
future leaders are trained and prepared for the challenges of tomorrow. More, it is a place where future leaders can build relationships with other students in their particular field. Finally, and most importantly, university is about building a foundation for successful careers, in stable, rewarding occupations (I exclude university research because it rarely has anything to do with teaching students.)
Let me repeat: learning is a positive force in our society. Every Canadian citizen should be given every opportunity to learn. But let’s remember that there are vast amounts of information available at the local public library, or even on the internet. Learning can happen anywhere. You do not need to attend university to learn, or to expand your mind.
So why attend university? Obviously, individuals attend university partly because of a desire to learn. But the vast majority of students don’t attend University to learn; they attend university to get ahead, to increase their position in society or their personal income. Frankly, that’s why I’m here. Well,
that and a strong desire to avoid a lifetime of manual labour.
If that is true, then most BA programs (among others) begin to look like a waste of time. Programs such as psychology, political science, history or even biology completely fail to teach students a marketable trade or skill. That is not to say that those programs teach nothing; it is to say that those programs have no connection to the real working world.
Worse, if students actually do find a job, they quickly realize that their BA education has no connection. I would know: I graduated with a political science degree, and I actually found a job. But nothing in my BA prepared me for what I had to face in that job, and my degree wasn’t what got me the job.
Unsurprisingly, few of my fellow students found a job. The fact is that we didn’t possess marketable, useful skills. We didn’t have a trade. University did nothing to prepare us for the real world.
My advice to students in programs with low employment prospects: understand your situation and be honest with what you want. If you’re in university simply to learn, then fine; but be ready to live with the consequences of that. If you’re in university to get a leg up in society, then you better find a way to learn a trade and market yourself into a job. Do whatever it takes, even if it means switching to a different program.
