Re:From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way
by ptaipale on Thursday December 29, 2016 @02:15AM
(#13276108)
I see the same across the pond in Finland. I was myself fitting very well to a theoretical elementary school but I could see how other people were totally frustrated by being fed with theoretical subjects (including that mandatory Swedish :) and not having practical training for things wehere they were really good at.
Not everyone can go to college, and not everyone needs to. Having a well-educated population is different from having a lot of college degrees. Alas, many politicians see it as "equality" that everyone's pushed with college-type qualifications. The only possible result is that it just lowers the bar and gives us more drop-outs and frustrated people.
But in the 2000's sometime, our glorious politicians decided that it was "unfair" that students who chose the vocational programmes couldn't go straight to university, so they were all changed, a lot more theoretical subjects were added, such that everyone would be eligible for college.
Naturally, a complete disaster, because the kids who previously chose vocational programmes because they were really tired of school and wanted to do something else, didn't do well in the new programmes and started flunking out en-masse instead.
I hear there's talk of going back to the old model again, but that's a decade or two "lost", because of political short-sightedness.
Yes, it's better to get your population college-educated than not, but you can't force people to do it. If people want to quit studying after elementary or high-school, let them! And if they want to go back to school after a few years, take them in again!