Paying for specialist education

Paying for specialist education

Antonia Cordedda and Paul

Nowadays young people haven’t any consciousness of their future roles in the economy – only a minority of students choose a course with the jobs market in mind. Many of them think of university as a playground where someone else pays for them. In several countries this has become a significant issue, and has created a debate in the policy area involving all productive sectors of the economy. Another problem is that parents can push people to do courses that do not interest them, and the quality of the graduates is not very high. The consequence of all this is that we have millions of young students without any prospect of job opportunities.

In a technological era, recent research shows that the economy needs specialization and appropriate skills. It has become crucial to convert the natural aptitudes of the young into practical knowledge that is useful to society. If the government wants to reduce the level of unemployment and maintain competitiveness with other advanced economies, it needs to manage the education of the next generation in a rational way. In many countries the advice of the research has been followed, and institutions have been set up with new strategies. The approach is to have a partnership between academics and industry to involve society in education and make courses more relevant.

Furthermore, it is well-known that public education has fallen behind private education due to public funding being given regardless of quality. This has implications for equal opportunities, because private education is more competitive and is more tightly connected to industry.

In short, old-fashioned education doesn’t exist any more. Young people want to be updated with the latest skills and to continue with training all their life.