Just to clarify, I'm not against a university education. As 'Somebody' said, it's all about what degree is being studied, what it is worth and how will it be used. But doing a degree in History just for the sake of having a degree, isn't a good enough reason to justify 4 years and tens of the thousands of pounds.
I'm not suggesting for a moment that everyone take a career at sea, its worked for me and just to mention that unlike Filipino Seafarers I normally work 1 month on / 1 month off (Filipino working conditions unfortunately are still catching up) which enables a lot of quality time with my family.
I think encouraging and supporting careers as Electricians, Plumbers and any other trade should be encouraged in schools. Taking an apprenticeship shouldn't be looked down up on. Unfortunately the focus in schools is that everyone should do the same, and there seems to be a strong focus on people becoming IT programmers or business management.
Then again in IT, as has been mentioned earlier, the best programmers I have met are people who knew C++ and Visual Basic at 14 years old, and were working in IT at 18 having never been to Uni. On the flip side, I've met people who have done degrees in IT and can write software which looks fine, but has to debugged by someone who actually understands the code. I'm not saying that a degree in IT isn't the way forward, but it isn't the answer in every case.
The Education system needs changes, but will that happen?
