r0dman.com

It’s amazing how things have changed. In the last 50 years, Australians have gone from a population of early school leavers, to pushing a large number of year 12 graduates into tertiary education.

While there is clearly a place for these organisations, I think it is unfair to be encouraging those who aren’t academics to continue studying after they finish up at school.

Take myself for instance. I went to a good private school in Adelaide, and from year 9 onwards I was asked “what uni degree will you do?”. Not “do you want to study after year 12?” or “have you thought of getting a trade?”. Nope, always about the uni. In the end, after being encouraged by my teachers, my parents and my mates to go to uni, I enrolled and gained entry into a Software Engineering degree. Two months in, I realised that it just wasn’t for me. I’m not able to learn by having someone tell me something to my face, I need to do it myself, and the course content was not for me. I saw out that semester, and nothing changed, so I quit and started working full-time.

It was always my dream to work in IT, and I was always told that in order for that to happen I’d need a degree, but it’s just blatant misinformation. Now that I’m out in the real world I realise how many people who work in my industry don’t have a degree. Many of them have certifications from companies like Microsoft, Cisco, Novell and so on, but very few have a degree – and most that do have a degree have one in Business Management or something completely unrelated like that.

Now I’m not disputing that degrees are important. There are many jobs that require a large amount of study to do it well, and rightly so. My friend is a dentist, my fiancee is an teacher and one of my other mates is now a lawyer. It just annoys me when I see teenagers convinced that they should go to uni so they can finish an obscure degree that won’t help them at all.

Why encourage your child to start their adult life with even more study after spending the last 13 years in the books, and a $20,000 debt before they truly know what they want to do with their life? If they have 100% direction and know that they want to be a doctor, then great. But if they “think” they want to be a personal trainer, there’s no point pushing them into a Science degree only for them to quit after doing it for two and a half years.

Honestly, whatever happened to learning the job that you need to do, on the job? Are employers too cheap to train people nowadays?

It’s obvious that universities want (and probably need) more and more money, so they offer more and more courses and degrees to do this. Because of the wider range of degrees, more people are going to uni to study, and because more people are considering study, more of the image driven parents are encouraging (and often forcing) their kids to study “with their best interest at heart”.

Everybody has their own direction and everybody learns differently. Be true to yourself and follow your own path.

Last night I volunteered to speak with some kids from my old school about the work that I do. The night is a careers “expo” of sorts, and most fields had a representative or two. I represented “Information Technology” on my own. Crazy, since it’s such a broad industry but I was up for the challenge.

My school, a private school, really pushes it’s students into university. Since it’s become the status quo for “successful” families nowadays, the parents really want their kids to go to uni too. It gives them status to be able to brag to their friends about. Back in the day, I too went down this track, and after six months actually quit uni and joined the workforce. It was the best decision that I ever made for my career. Out in the workforce I realised that those with a degree usually end up with the same issues of finding work as someone without a degree – a lack of experience. Experience is king in IT, and often a degree may make finding work easier, but without a degree you have a four year head start on everyone else! Now while this obviously doesn’t apply to all industries, it certainly does in IT in Australia.

Telling parents this was received in a number of different ways. One parent said “but surely nowadays you HAVE to have a degree”, adamant that her son needed a degree. I wasn’t telling her that her son shouldn’t go to uni, just that he should explore his options. Most of the parents were happy to hear my story, and in some ways happy that there is indeed more than one way for their son or daughter to get into the industry.

What struck me so hard was one parent. His son was the most keen kid that I spoke to for the whole evening. You could tell that he had a really strong interest in computers and really wanted to get into the industry. The father on the other hand just wasn’t interested and quite obviously didn’t want to be there.

It was amazing that I was sitting there, trying to give his son all of the help that I could to send him in the right direction, yet as a parent, he just didn’t care less about what was going on and obviously wanted the night to end so he could go home.

When I quit uni my parents weren’t happy at all. At 18, they didn’t believe that I was able to make the right decisions for myself yet and as a result they didn’t support me in my decisions. Seeing this kid last night, and seeing his dad’s display of “couldn’t care less” parenting, it has just reinforced my beliefs in how I will raise my kids one day.

While I understand that children, and even adults are never going to make the right decisions 100% of the time, I’m going to support my kids in whatever they want to do. Life’s too short to push them into something that they aren’t interested in.

Support peoples’ dreams, and help them to become their true self. Help them to break away from the norm and beat mediocrity.