Should employ ability of students be the main goal of universities?

Mr. Pusbhpinder Bhatia Founder mapmystudy.com Speaks...

In today’s competitive environment employability seems to be a big driving force, changing strategies of many institutes trying to woe students with outcome stories and alumni’ success stories are becoming more and more apparent.

So real question to address is does education really lead to employability or rather let’s ask should employment of students the main goal of universities?

The expectation...
So, is it important to study a program with employability in mind, I guess that in itself is driven by your own agenda in life or your present circumstances. Much broader view on this comes from country in which I currently live in ‘India’, education here is treated as an investment’ which creates an evident expectation of return on the investment, quite self explanatory and I see this in many other western countries aswell. I feel there are 3’ driving forces that instigate such expectations: 1. The mind set of students in such countries (culturally what is followed), 2. The local competitiveness and the focus on survival drives students to choose courses that have strong employability, 3. The higher cost of education these days for degree level programs. I am quite often asked by parents during seminars: will my child get a Good Job after the course suggested by you? this very question drives many universities to focus on employability of students as demand seems to be driving them towards this and possibly their own objective is more financially driven and not so much academically driven.

The Challenge
Employability is important part of the study cycle but should not be the only driving force for education. Outcome of what you learn needs to be put in practice and in real life however how students might earn should not be factor of consideration for institutes. It is quite common for institutes to publish their students start salaries and their on campus corporate recruitment statistics to boost their reputation but I guess institutes with strong academics are able to keep the balance on quality of education imparted and the outcome of their students employability. From global prospective this is the challenge for many institutes now with rising competition to source students from around the world, the fight to keep the class room multicultural and at the end to make sure you have a happy student who further refers his friends to them on social media’ is successfully met.

Look for more important Education and Career updates from mapmystudy.com.