Is a university degree still the best route to a career?

For generations, the advice to young people was fairly straightforward: do well at school, go to university, get a degree and then find a good job.

For many careers, that remains sound advice. Doctors, engineers, lawyers, teachers and many other professionals need appropriate university qualifications. A strong academic education remains enormously valuable.

But is a university degree really a basic requirement for everyone?

We have gradually created a system in which a degree can sometimes be seen as the destination rather than one possible route. Young people spend three or four years, sometimes longer, earning qualifications and then enter a very different world — one in which employers may ask a simple question:

“What can you actually do?”

When the answer is not immediately obvious, the result can be frustration and disappointment and, for some, even despair.

The problem is not that young people have studied too much. Perhaps we have simply not given them enough opportunities to apply what they have learned.

Route to employment

Forty or fifty years ago, a university degree seemed to offer a fairly clear route into employment. You graduated and you found a job. It might have been with the railways, the telegraph department, a bank or a government office. It may not have been your dream job, but there was a general expectation that a qualification would lead somewhere.

Today, that pathway is far less certain.

So what should a young person leave school with?

Certainly knowledge and a good academic foundation. But I believe they should also have the opportunity to develop something practical — something they can actually use.

This is not a new idea. A great many people are already thinking about it. Senior educators, employers, policymakers and business leaders have been discussing employability, practical learning, entrepreneurship and the changing needs of the workplace for years.

The challenge is not thinking of the ideas. It is putting them into practice.

A conversation with employers

Schools and universities cannot do this alone. Employers need to be part of the conversation too. Businesses know what young people are expected to do when they enter the workplace, where they struggle and what they often wish they had learned earlier. That experience should help shape education.

There is also an international dimension.

Young people increasingly study and work across borders, yet a qualification or skill accepted in one country may not always be recognised in another. Examining bodies need to work more closely together so that qualifications and skills are more consistently understood and recognised.

Education should open doors, not leave young people wondering whether what they have learned will be recognised when they cross a border.

At the same time, we should not make the mistake of setting academic education against practical education. We need both. The question is whether every child needs exactly the same balance.

Why not give pupils the opportunity to spend two years developing a genuine practical skill?

A pupil interested in finance could learn bookkeeping, prepare simple accounts, understand cash flow and manage a budget. Someone interested in engineering could learn how machines work, use tools safely, assemble something and diagnose a problem.

Another might discover an interest in hospitality, interior design, photography, graphic design, digital media, fashion or automotive skills.

From the drawing board to the marketplace

Entrepreneurship could mean taking an idea from the drawing board to the marketplace — identifying a need, calculating costs, developing a product, marketing it and making that first sale.

Technology should be approached in much the same way. Instead of simply talking about coding or artificial intelligence, why not let pupils use technology to build something useful?

The principle is simple: less talking about skills, more doing them.

Let pupils handle the accounts, use the tools, design something, build something and solve a problem. Let them make mistakes and try again. And assess them on what they can actually do.

Imagine a young person leaving school saying: “I have a qualification — but I can also do this.”

That is the combination we should be aiming for.

It takes me back to my teaching days at Bishop’s in the 1980s.

It was an ICSE school, and pupils had a subject called Socially Useful Productive Work — SUPW. At the time, I don’t think we fully appreciated what a good idea it was.

There was cycle repair, carpentry and cooking. I particularly remember a gentleman who would bring an old car to school. The boys would gather around it, learning about the engine, identifying its different parts and understanding how repairs were carried out.

They were not simply reading about an engine in a textbook. They were standing beside an actual car, looking into an actual engine and working with their hands.

Not every boy was interested, of course. But some took to it like a fish takes to water.

And that was the beauty of it. We were discovering that children have different abilities and interests. Some were academically inclined. Others discovered that they could make, repair, build or solve practical problems.

The work was assessed, and the marks appeared on their examination mark sheets.

Looking back, I think we may have underestimated what we were doing.

Children need opportunities to make and do, not simply read and write.

Emphasis on vocational learning

The UAE is already placing greater emphasis on vocational learning, entrepreneurship, technology and practical capabilities. The CBSE and other boards are also giving greater recognition to skill education. That is encouraging, but I think we can go further.

Instead of every young person asking, “Which university should I go to?”, perhaps some should also be asking, “What can I do?” And eventually, “What can I create?”

A university degree should be one route to a fulfilling career — not the only route.

I often think back to that old car at Bishop’s: boys gathered around the engine, learning what each part did, how it worked and how to fix it.

Some may have forgotten the lesson. Others may have discovered something much more valuable: they could take an engine apart, find the fault, fix it — and make the car run again.

Perhaps the bigger question today is not whether we know what needs to change. Many of us already do.

The question is whether we are prepared to make the change.

So, to the educators, policymakers, business leaders and employers who shape the future of our young people — and to world leaders who shape the systems in which they will live and work — I would ask: Are we preparing young people simply to earn qualifications, or are we preparing them to actually do something with them?

Michael Guzder is Executive Vice-President, Education at GEMS