Is university still worth it?

Ahhhh, university. The party that, for many of us, went beyond the three years intended. Where we came out full of knowledge, promise and, hopefully, some or other certification. That was then. We had our issues in the 2000s but the institutions were largely functional at least.

If you read the news today, you can’t be blamed for thinking that university is where you go to protest, get sexually assaulted and, of late, peed on by people who can somehow still afford the exorbitant price of liquor. Not to sound like that old toppie, but in my day, university seemed like a different experience entirely.

Even so, what they never told us and what I’m guessing they don’t tell the current crop is that the degree they dangle in front of you isn’t really worth much in the job market without you excelling in some sort of other noticeable way.

I don’t know where the idea of having a degree is the ultimate key to the job market comes from. Perhaps the insinuation is reinforced by the environment, but when you sit in your graduation ceremony you should realise how many people you’ll be competing with for the same job. And that’s before opening social media and realising there are several other universities out there producing the same graduates. It’s around that time that the stress should start to settle in.

What really sucks is that no matter how few jobs there are available, being a graduate significantly reduces your odds of being unemployed. On paper, that seems great. In South Africa, it’s more a matter of spending three or more years converting yourself from an unemployed matric to a more employable, unemployed graduate.

But, it’s a free country! If you want to take that path, and you believe you can make it work, then by all means.

The only question is, should we pay for this?

Historically, around the world, free tertiary education would benefit the society in so many different ways; ways that I’d hope South Africa could benefit from too. I mean, it’s marvellous to have doctors. It’s marvellous to have more doctors. It’s marvellous that those who will go on to be good doctors but can’t fork out the R800,000 it will cost to become those doctors might get a chance to be those doctors. Awesome. What then?

Well, they could go to private hospitals or they could get in at a public hospital where we read that circumstances are so dire, they bring their own patients food. Either way, there’s little public benefit when you’re not efficiently using the human resources you’ve paid for.

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Accountancy too has problems locally, with high demand for our CA skills abroad, so those years of slog, often tax payer funded, are rewarded by nice jobs in tax havens with little benefit retained in South Africa.

And if you can get a job in say social work or care, the resources you’re given in the public sector to work with don’t exactly seem to cut it, but at least you’ll have your salary.

In short, the STEM skilled are incentivised to ditch the country and any other skill stuck here have limited public benefit since they find themselves in a shoddily supplied context.

Education is, no doubt, worth it if you can do something with it. From a South African perspective though, with little capacity to do much with what we create, it’s time to go back to the drawing board and rethink our approach to education.

If the aim is to make 250,000 people more employable every year, even if there are few jobs to fill, I’m not sure it’s a great investment of public funds. If the aim is to make those 250,000 people part of a larger development plan that benefits 60 million people, I can get on board with that.

We can dream.