I’m always amazed at how rarely the “go to uni and get a good job” angle is brought up in relation to our failing foundational industries in the west. We’ve been incentivizing people to focus on “escaping” the working class, rather than trying to find ways to make those jobs more appealing.
I work in healthcare. Treating student practitioners badly is the norm in a ton of places in this field. 60 hour work weeks are normalized, and wanting a good work-life balance gets you ostracized.
The worst part is that I had to compete to get into this job that treats me badly. My program only takes the top 20 applicants out of hundreds per year. The schooling is brutal, with midterm or final exams 2-3 times a week. This is possible because you are blowing through courses consecutively rather than in a semesterized system. Once you get to practical placement, you are treated like the workplace bitch, and you’re expected to do 2-3x the work of a paid worker for free. Actually, you’re paying tuition to be there, so it’s even worse.
Don’t get me wrong, some of the brutality is necessary. The rapid pace of learning makes it hard to forget anything. It’s a great way to pack knowledge into the brain. But I would never recommend my program to anyone. It was a horrible experience overall. My job is pretty great minus the ridiculous hours, so I’m glad I went. But if I could go back and tell my younger self to do something else, I would.
Maybe that angle became the norm because the working class jobs were turned to shit over time via union busting among other things. I don’t think nearly as many would be thinking about university if many if not most working class jobs weren’t seen as precarious. Heck even a ton of white collar jobs that require university degrees are precarious now. This is not to detract from your point that we need to improve the conditions of these jobs, just to put the blame where I think it belongs and therefore where the solutions lie.
I’m always amazed at how rarely the “go to uni and get a good job” angle is brought up in relation to our failing foundational industries in the west. We’ve been incentivizing people to focus on “escaping” the working class, rather than trying to find ways to make those jobs more appealing.
I work in healthcare. Treating student practitioners badly is the norm in a ton of places in this field. 60 hour work weeks are normalized, and wanting a good work-life balance gets you ostracized.
The worst part is that I had to compete to get into this job that treats me badly. My program only takes the top 20 applicants out of hundreds per year. The schooling is brutal, with midterm or final exams 2-3 times a week. This is possible because you are blowing through courses consecutively rather than in a semesterized system. Once you get to practical placement, you are treated like the workplace bitch, and you’re expected to do 2-3x the work of a paid worker for free. Actually, you’re paying tuition to be there, so it’s even worse.
Don’t get me wrong, some of the brutality is necessary. The rapid pace of learning makes it hard to forget anything. It’s a great way to pack knowledge into the brain. But I would never recommend my program to anyone. It was a horrible experience overall. My job is pretty great minus the ridiculous hours, so I’m glad I went. But if I could go back and tell my younger self to do something else, I would.
Maybe that angle became the norm because the working class jobs were turned to shit over time via union busting among other things. I don’t think nearly as many would be thinking about university if many if not most working class jobs weren’t seen as precarious. Heck even a ton of white collar jobs that require university degrees are precarious now. This is not to detract from your point that we need to improve the conditions of these jobs, just to put the blame where I think it belongs and therefore where the solutions lie.