The bitter pill of elusive degrees

Every year at this time, we see the frantic race by young people to get places at universities. Tertiary institutions are being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of applications because many make multiple applications countrywide in a desperate effort to get started on a degree course. Sadly, many of those aspirant students will be disappointed because there will be others who make the grade ahead of them with better matric results. Still others will suffer the same fate because they either started the process late or did better in the exam than they thought they would and suddenly realised they have a chance at a university education.

Even more tragic is the fact that, despite all the crowing about how wonderful our matric results have been, many of those admitted to university will fail early on because they simply are not capable, intellectually, of the rigour which university study demands.

Yet, more anguish awaits even those who qualify, because there are not nearly enough jobs for graduates… even some newly qualified doctors sit at home.

This awful situation is down to one thing: our government has sold tens of thousands of young people a dream of a better life through university which is, frankly, unattainable for them.

Young people are being filled with delusions of adequacy and, in the end, will become embittered at the waste of their precious youth pursuing those illusions.

The ANC government seems to believe that technical or manual work is beneath the people of our country – why else would they ignore the trade school and technikon system which, for years, turned out those people any society needs to function properly: carpenters, mechanics, plumbers, electricians and bricklayers.

We need tradespeople far more than we need people with degrees – especially those degrees in the “soft” subjects.