Adam ruins everything

.. is a program on SBS, where this guy, Adam, explains things that are usually contrary to what you think.

Of note, in the past he talked about the US Education system where everyone has effectively been pushed into getting a degree because of a push to get everyone signed up to loans. I.e. it was a scheme to make people buy debt just to get an education, and they all needed it to compete with others that also signed up to massive debt. Surprisingly I think he also mentioned that you can get good degrees from other universities for much less than the name brand universities.

So, private education has resulted in lots of people signing their life away to huge debt just to get a job which in a lot of cases doesn't need a degree.

Are we going the same way here? There seems to be a push for degrees for everything, and universities have opened up their systems to be much more lenient and accessible. Is this just to create a debt for education cycle?

Who wins?

This issue has been explained to me by work colleagues in the USA based company I work for. The cost for them is massive, and they don't seem to see a way out of it. Apparently $130K salary is now the poverty line in the area where the company is, given all the debt these young people are laden with. Then there is the housing. Either you pay massive rent, or else you pay annual state tax (typically $10K to $20K a year) on the house you own, and then the cost of health insurance, $30K per year for a family!!!!!

Land of the free?

Does every kid need to go to year 12 in Australia? All I see is that your career is held back by 2 years if you want to do a trade.

As a counterpoint, Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs has been an advocate of trade certs or their equivalent as a counter to the degree/debt mill...

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bazz61 said..
Get a degree ... work inside ... its 36 deg here in SE qld im outside .. what they should do is have non air con class rooms for those that want to do trades & aircon rooms for those that want degrees .

You're missing the main issue here....tradies knock off in time to sail in the afternoon on a weekday, whereas the poor buggers who spent their time getting a degree might have an air-conditioned office, but they can often struggle to get a mid-week sail.

Some of you know what I do for a living.

Education is driven by cya pen pushers both on the curriculum and policy level here and from what I see it's pretty
much broken and irrelevant for what is coming. It need to be driven by pragmatic bodies from industry. We are still Filling these poor souls with useless content and testing them on it, that can be accessed from any smart phone if needed instead of helping them discover how to problem solve. How to practically and creatively solve problems. How to work in teams to do this. We try our best to do this in what is an antiquated structure.

So regardless of any debt, funding model, it's fcked anyway.

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Gazuki said..
I am personally feeling the effect of this trend in my profession. I have worked as a Paramedic for 17+ years and was trained under the old VET system. In recent times there has been a push from state services to abandon this and the minimum standard is now a degree. This didn't affect me as I was already working but the government has now sought to register us all. Therefore myself and many others are forced to obtain a degree to enable me to do the same job that I have been doing for 17 years. The study I feel is a complete waste of time and it wouldn't irk me so much if I wasn't going tens of thousands of dollars of debt. Very annoying but if you don't do it, your unemployable.
The one I feel sorry for though is the one who obtained a degree and can't get work. I've lost count of the kids who I've met who are degree qualified but have never been able to work, just lumped with a massive debt.

You need a degree to become a Paramedic in addition to other courses? Surely they can provide more relevant training specific to that profession, or do they now want just any degree in addition to specific training?

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FormulaNova said..

Gazuki said..
I am personally feeling the effect of this trend in my profession. I have worked as a Paramedic for 17+ years and was trained under the old VET system. In recent times there has been a push from state services to abandon this and the minimum standard is now a degree. This didn't affect me as I was already working but the government has now sought to register us all. Therefore myself and many others are forced to obtain a degree to enable me to do the same job that I have been doing for 17 years. The study I feel is a complete waste of time and it wouldn't irk me so much if I wasn't going tens of thousands of dollars of debt. Very annoying but if you don't do it, your unemployable.
The one I feel sorry for though is the one who obtained a degree and can't get work. I've lost count of the kids who I've met who are degree qualified but have never been able to work, just lumped with a massive debt.

You need a degree to become a Paramedic in addition to other courses? Surely they can provide more relevant training specific to that profession, or do they now want just any degree in addition to specific training?

After completing a three year Degree of Paramedical Science as an entry-level certificate, you can then apply to a state service for their three-year programme on the job training.

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Cambodge said..

eppo said..
Some of you know what I do for a living.

Education is driven by cya pen pushers both on the curriculum and policy level here and from what I see it's pretty
much broken and irrelevant for what is coming. It need to be driven by pragmatic bodies from industry. We are still Filling these poor souls with useless content and testing them on it, that can be accessed from any smart phone if needed instead of helping them discover how to problem solve. How to practically and creatively solve problems. How to work in teams to do this. We try our best to do this in what is an antiquated structure.

So regardless of any debt, funding model, it's fcked anyway.

All these things you're saying that education needs to be I am already seeing in my kids' primary and secondary schooling right now.

Maybe tertiary education hasn't caught up yet(?) but it looks pretty embedded already in the earlier years.

Naplan, university entrance exams, all with publishable results, driven by centralised curriculum. Centralised number crunching and accountability that drives the end product. What you value is what you get. Bricks in the wall whose skill sets
are For jobs that don't and won't exist. I see the creativity sucked out of kids everyday. We've got it seriously wrong folks.

grew up in a poor area, none of the kids I grew up with went to uni.
some of them now are very successful buisiness men

few mates I met through work had degrees ,, very very very few of them were of any real use

couple fellas with degrees in social social and buisiness and they are working as trades assistant on mines to pay off hecs debt.

I won't send my kids to uni, I'd rather buy them a couple acres down the coast

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Adriano said..

FormulaNova said.... is a program on SBS, where this guy, Adam, explains things that are usually contrary to what you think.
Of note, in the past he talked about the US Education system where everyone has effectively been pushed into getting a degree because of a push to get everyone signed up to loans. I.e. it was a scheme to make people buy debt just to get an education...

Interestingly when such things are raised on HW one gets shouted down as a conspiracy theorist....LOL

Hey Adriano! I started this one 'out here' as not everyone reads HW, and there's no need it has to be one of those anyway. Sometimes things do happen in the real world, sometimes they are conspiracies, and sometimes they are even outright objectives.

The bit in the program was where Adam was describing what happened and when, i.e. it appears to be substantiated history.

Me, personally, I am worried that if we are not careful that we look to the US system and aim to be just like them, when it really doesn't seem to add much value to the workplace.

I don't have a degree, but I work in a field where most people do, even though most of what they teach you at uni doesn't really map to real workplace skills. I did first year and have not seen anything there that really matched work other than problem solving skills, and some people don't seem to have them whether they have done a degree or not.

Unfortunately for me, in a competitive workplace, degrees have now become a requirement for a lot of roles, even though it adds very little.

I will be worried when the government here starts to address lack of graduate entry jobs by saying instead that people need two degrees to be competitive, whereas in reality they just need the job opportunities.

Don't tell me the magic of the free market is failing us.

We must understand that having a tertiary education doesn't mean that you will automatically get a job. For instance having an engineering degree only means that you have the qualification to work as an engineer if the engineering job is available. This is the same for tradesmen, your plumbing ticket doesn't necessarily mean you will automatically get a job as a plumber, it means you can work as a plumber if a job is available. But yes, education is a very lucrative business, whether it be trade training or tertiary level training.

To say that "an education has no value" is completely wrong .......... it is more correct to say that "an education to gain employment in an industry where there are few job options is a little silly"