Hot times are here at AJV!
People are getting the fear that a university education won’t provide for their needs, and they're understanding the growing possibility that vo-tech school is a superior career preparation option. This can be readily inferred from the absence of career services or post-college jobs center on or affiliated with a campus.Call the admissions hotline at UW-Madison, (608) 262-3961, and then press “2” to get the switchboard. Ask the receptionist to please be transferred to the career services department -- and ask sincerely so that no nonverbal evidence of a “possibly insincere” or leading question is telegraphed. What will she say?
When I called on February 7, “Ally” responded, “I don’t know if we really have that at our campus.” She’s supposed to be trained in how to answer the most important questions about UW-Madison, BUT she does not know anything about the existence of career services -- let alone how to get in touch with a field-specific career counselor! How incriminating!!!
In Ally’s defense, the admissions department -- or whichever organizational unit she works in as a campus switchboard operator -- obviously neglected to train her for those types of questions. This indicates a clear chasm between the career orientation of potential students and the nonchalant attitude towards graduate employment held by campus officials.
“Whatever counts is counted,” as the program evaluator’s axiom goes, and neither UW-Madison nor most other universities care enough about employment for its graduates to bother allocating even a smidgen of its billion-dollar budget towards monitoring professional employment outcomes of recent graduates.
Remember, UW-Madison doesn’t care enough about the efficacy of its so-called “career preparation” to train its phone representatives and admissions counselors to answer the very simple question of whom to speak for career guidance let alone for job placement statistics!
“Now wait a minute, Joe -- you’re just saying this because ‘you didn’t get yours’ after you graduated!” Rest assured that I speak for many more beyond myself when I tear down the gilded curtain of the higher ed hoo-hah. The public deserves to know the hard-hitting realities of a university system it unquestioningly entrusts with their children’s future and with their own attempts at occupational rejuvenation.
The main thrust of my argument is that unrealistic expectations -- egocentric hubris on behalf of potential students and their over-reaching moral supporters -- means they over-estimate their chances of achieving professional employment after they graduate. Many of these office jobs are imaginary Internet-surfing roles based on popular fiction such as The Office -- but it is all a lie; none of the people portrayed in such a television series would ever snag a job in real life other than food service.
University involvement is therefore less likely in reality to produce a return on investment career-wise than the college-bound are conditioned to believe in the echo chamber of higher education, high school AP / IB classes, and preppy friends comparing which universities they applied for.
In fact, “college bound” is a misnomer -- you’re not the universities’ slaves! You’re bound to nothing! Who ever obligated *you* to go to college?
Why isn’t it yet fashionable for high school seniors to say they’re “trade school-bound” or “free to work full-time” when discussing their future among peers? By the time I’m done, it will be!
This insidiously ignorant assumption of financial return on higher education, or that it will somehow help the individual in ways beyond one’s intrinsic abilities, is total bunk. It is my life’s mission to debunk it!
“But think of all the good you could do for the university as a Communications Specialist or Front-End Web Developer!” The UW System had several opportunities to interview me for those positions, but now the window of opportunity has passed -- there is no expatiation shy of declining enrollment and increased hand wringing by flabbergasted administrators!
I’m dredging up the data and drilling to the core takeaways because sheer rhetoric alone won’t win the day against a billion-dollar industry of higher education hucksters.
Nonetheless, book progress is coming along nicely as I uncover more data regarding the massive investment inputs and lackluster economic outputs of university systems. The issue is so complex that I cannot presently give a publication date -- but rest assured, the anti-university crusade is what drives me to get out of bed each morning!
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