As somebody who completed their Leaving Certificate in what seems like a lifetime ago, the current trend towards higher education being the be-all and end-all of life bears some consideration.
In my early years in secondary school, it was still perfectly normal or acceptable for a small number of people to leave school after only completing their Junior Certificate. I know of people who did this. They were out the door so to speak as soon as they could possible do so. As time went on, more and more students tended to stay on for the leaving certificate, but were certain that this was as far as they were going to go in the education system. By the time I sat my Leaving Certificate, far more, in fact, the vast majority of students were staying on to do so. Some people followed this up by going on to 3rd level, others went straight into the workforce. However, one thing that was for certain was that there at least seemed to be a good opportunity to find work, if that was what you wanted.
However, things have changed hugely since then. We now seem to be very much in the situation where-by it seems like the entire country is trying to get into 3rd level education, and I was one of them. Obviously times of recession will cause this to happen but what seems to be significant here, and it is something which does not seem to be getting addressed in this country, is the fact that, a society where-by everyone has to go into 3rd level education in order to give themselves a chance in life is probably only going to create problems down the line, and is probably not sustainable in the long term either. This topic raised its head during one particular conversation where-by a man, when discussing how his son had gone through years of college, told of how it was still practically impossible for him to actually find work.
He thought it was also a ludicrous situation where-by those who could find even the most basic of work had to have degrees or masters, or so on. After all, if everyone has one, and if you need one to find even the most basic of jobs, do they really hold any value any more.
Germany, on the other hand is a country which seems to have identified this potential problem. They set up their education and training system in such a way as to mean that only those that really want, and who benefit from 3rd level education would need go. For other people, there are other types of training made available, including a big emphasis on apprenticeships, something which in many ways fell by the way-side in Ireland in recent times. They seem to get that not everybody either wants to go to, or is suited for 3rd level education, and they seem to get that other types of training are just as important, something perhaps the Irish government needs to take a look at.
Marketing Views & Insights 