Are Vocational Courses More Important Than Academic Ones?

A government report out of the UK claims 350,000 young people are hurting themselves by taking "vocational" courses instead of more academic ones

A new column by Andrew Thomson at The Guardian posits the question: Is a degree in chemical engineering a ‘dead-end’ if you eventually end up working in banking?

People are quick to condemn vocational qualifications as “dead-end” if they fail to lead directly to jobs, but have rarely subjected A-levels and degrees to the same test. This could change as degrees become more expensive and people question whether the qualification is worth the cost.

As colleges and universities prepare for fall courses to begin this year, and tens of thousands of students prepare to move on to higher education, Thomson feels that it is weird that more people aren’t talking about this.  He feels that the new government study (the Wolf report) does some credit to vocational qualifications, but also states that 350,000 young people are on “dead-end” courses by pursuing vocational jobs.  All of this while universities around the world, and especially in the UK, continue to charge more and more for academic degrees.

So how do you judge the value of a qualification? It is always assumed academic studies are valuable in themselves; people would never say an engineering degree is a dead end if you ultimately become a banker. So why should an IT qualification be a cul-de-sac, if you become a care worker?

Thomson states that expanding the number of graduates is certain to reduce the dividend of a degree. And although some young people may be persuaded that the loans they accrue are acceptable, others won’t, and the number of applicants for post-graduate programs will fall.  While the way degrees relate to jobs is not yet a subject for public anxiety, it’s a different story for other qualifications at lower levels of the qualification tree.

We need the potential of our young people to be liberated, and while there is a focus on liberating institutions we risk losing this much greater good in yet more dead ends.

Read the full column by Thomson here.