h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi all, and particularly spa(nner etc)...

You obviously got the message that I'm taking a position here that interests me, rather than one I wholly believe. So - about the 5%...

Of course actually getting something done relies on the 95%, and a great deal of that work will be in the internal economy and in the public service system. We need it, it has to be well run, sure.

But not many countries can prosper nowadays if their economies are bounded by internal weakness (only those with the self-sufficiency to be able to profit from protectionism. There's a maximum of one of those, and even the US can't really afford the luxury...but that's part of another debate). In the real world, you need a balance of trade, and a worthwhile currency. So you need something to sell, and in a country worth living in, it isn't going to be labour. Always having to work harder than the next guy spoils your life, as I'm sure you've noticed.

The competitive avantage can only come from ideas. Only a few of the 5% are in pure research, though, because having ideas is only part of the need. You have to exploit them too. The majority of the 5% are thus generating businesses around the ideas. They're building them, securing and directing investment, selling the product, prospecting for the next thing. And of course herding the 95%.

This is absolutely not meant to be cynical. It's how every economic superpower has risen from sweatshop to creative economy.

The link back to the original post now comes with the idea of a lazy pseudo-economy, generating some quick but ultimately superficial cycle of return. To be fair, the young are only following the trend. The real criminals are the bankers who put short-term return above any sense of long-term national economic responsibility. The foregoing comments about criminally stupid professions now pale into insignificance. There is one calling that amounts to pure treason, a crime against humanity's future generations. And, yes, it's banking.

I'm not an anarchist, btw. I tend to get edgy without my tie, and I park where I'm told to. There is something profoundly wrong with capitalism, though, and with the spurious ascendency of the shareholder in this world's decision-making processes.

My (facetious) solution would be to increase the standard accounting period to a century, and to pay dividends at thousand-year intervals.

Pin

Interesting conversation... I'll try to answer some of what I read here.

As far as career counseling in the US, when I was in high school, not much was said about it until I reached the point where a decision needed to be made *soon* about what kind of courses I would take. I hadn't even *thought* about what I was going to do after high school graduation! At that point, my guidance counselor asked me what I liked to do, and from there suggested a couple of possible majors and helped me find a couple of colleges (unis) to pick from where I might like to study. She didn't tell me what I had to do - I *was* given options based on what my current interests were, but not many - I guess the idea was to not overwhelm me with choices.

In contrast, my own kids started taking aptitude tests as soon as they entered high school (maybe even some earlier), to try to narrow down their interests and start career planning. Once the aptitude tests are scored, they offer suggestions about what kinds of careers might interest the kids. After taking enough of these tests, they tended to know which answers would give them the results they wanted to hear, which throws off the accuracy of the test because they're essentially supposed to be taken with no idea of what those odd questions are intended to discover about you.

However, I don't think either method really prepares the 18 yr old to pick out what they will be happy doing for the next 45 years. They're much too young, and their interests are going to change over the next 10 years, possibly even several times. Ok, perhaps if they show significant signs of being creative, their interests will always be in creative fields, or if they show significant signs of being service oriented, their interests will always be in service fields, etc.

But the problem lies in the idea that these kids are pushed to pick out what they want to do before they've had a chance to try anything and see if they actually *like* it or not. I know one lady who has a degree in drafting, but but discovered after working in it for a while that she hated everything about it. After floundering around for a few years, she worked as a nurse's aide, and liked it so much that she's now an RN - Finally, she loves her job. Another friend went directly to nursing school after high school graduation, but found out shortly after starting to work in her new career that she didn't care for anything at all about the job. However, in working for her father keeping his books, she found that she liked accounting very much. Yet another friend has a degree in early childhood education, but was never an effective teacher because she simply isn't assertive enough to keep her class under control. She's still looking for a job that she really wants to do. I should mention that all these women are from my generation, back when career guidance counseling was left to the last minute. I suspect that the constant aptitude testing my kids have gone through has been a reaction to the fact that so many people in my generation have made major mid-life career changes, not that I think the early aptitude testing really works because if you start out too early, you're still not going to get a mature picture of their aptitude.



Someone mentioned something about medical professions could be filled with the "average" people, they didn't have to be all that smart (at least that was the impression I got from the posting). I'm sorry, but if someone is going to cut open my insides and take out a few parts, I want to make absolutely sure they know what they're doing. There's enough tragic medical mistakes out there. This means that the doctors need to be intelligent enough to be able to call up from memory that "disease A" which is spelled very similarly and may even have similar symptoms to "disease B" are two entirely different things and what the difference is - and that you treat one disease with "medication C" which happens to be spelled very similarly to "medication D", what the difference is, how much to prescribe, etc. I'm sorry, the *average* mind may have difficulty remembering all that for instant recall. This is the very reason that the medical board tests are so incredibly difficult and detailed. They may not be working "hard" physically, but they do need to work their minds constantly.

Eighteen is indeed too young. As a nineteen year old, I know one of the major reasons that I'm at university is to put off having to live in the real world for another couple of years. Sounds a little silly, but it's correct.

Until just after the start of my A-levels (about sixteen, going on seventeen) I was still going to be a particle physicist. I still love the field, have a great interest in it. I had been dubbed with the brush of 'scientist' since the ago of about seven. I was never *forced* to do anything, just expected.

'What A-levels are you going to do?', not 'What do you want to do when you finish school? Are you going to get a job or try for furthur education?'
And again, 'What university are you going to?' not 'What are you intending to do next?'

It was always assumed of me that I was going to go to Sixth Form, then onto University. After that probably get married, settle down, have a family. I can't see anything wrong with this. I'm a homebody, I want to fall in love, get married, bring up my children and live happily ever after. But I don't want to be *expected* to do so.

I'm not especially bright. I'm reasonably intelligent, but nothing stunning. I managed to scrape a D at A-level physics (it was lucky that I had already decided to do music at that point!) and a C at maths. The idea of my doctor being as intelligent as me is a scary one. We need top brains to do their job, not ones like mine.

The careers service is not great. I used to help run my school one aged fourteen, for goodness sakes. But give them credit; you cannot tell everyone exactly what each and every career expects, needs and feels like. I'm heading for a Music degree. Nobody has come out with a definitive list of my career choises and what they entail because there isn't one. The obvious of course, but after that, who knows? An Arts degree is far more open ended than what I was going to do, Particle and Quantum Physics. Leaves you a bit stuck if you decide you don't want to work in it at the end, that one.

This may be one of the reasons why in the US the unis still require a pile of general education credits for graduation - takes at least one year to finish those, usually two. That way, a student can enter uni as an "undeclared" major, finish up all the general ed stuff, and at the age of 20 or 21 be more mature and better able to figure out what they really want to do with the rest of their lives, then spend the last 2 years just taking classes related to their major.

Unfortunately it doesn't really work out much better that way, because most people haven't reached the kind of maturity level to make that kind of decision until at least their mid-20's - up until then, they're still trying out new things, testing the waters to see what they'd really like to do.

This is one of the reasons it would be better for recent high school graduates to take a couple of years and get a variety of job experiences before heading off to uni, but things are not set up to encourage that kind of thing at all.

Scholarships that will make any kind of real dent in uni expenses are seldom available except to high school seniors - and they usually have to have their major all picked out before they can qualify for the scholarship, which brings us back to another reason why the high school guidance counselors push these kids to pick a major right away. Of course, majors can always be changed - students do it all the time, but it might mean losing funding, depending upon the conditions under which the scholarship is awarded.

I picked my career at 12, and now ten years later have still stuck to it. Though I'm two years off graduation I don't feel I wasn't old enough to make that kind of committment at 18. I'm convinced that only 18 year olds are actually arogant enough to take on the responsiblity that comes with medicine. If I was older I would have assumed that I couldn't do it. I was in fact rather annoyed that I had to wait until I was 18 to go to medical school. MOst of things I learnt whilst doing my A levels were completely irrelvelent and boring.

I don't really think that we should encourage 18 year olds to go to Univesity unless they really really know what they're doing. So many people go because they can't think of anything else to do. I hope that if I have children I won't encourge them to go to University unless they find something that they are as passonate about as I was.

Here in the States, people don't go to medical or law school until *after* they've finished university (there are a few exceptions here and there, but they are relatively rare), which puts the average age of starting medical or law school around 22-23 (for those who do medical/law school directly after a 4-year university degree, which is so called even though a rather decent proportion of students take 5 years to finish). We also have an ever-increasing number of people who are going to medical or law school later in life -- sometimes after having put a spouse through school, sometimes as a midlife career change. It's not uncommon at all these days to have a 1st-year medical school class that ranges in age from 19 to 38.

And of course, they were just saying in the paper yesterday that there's a 12-year old starting medical school in Chicago this year, after graduating from Loyola University this past spring. That's something I have a hard time getting my brain around. Luckily (in many ways), he's doing an MD-PhD program -- the way those usually work here is that you do your 2 academic years of medical school (all the labs and lectures and whatnot), then stop and do the PhD, and then do your 2 clinical years. Normally you have some clinical contact during those first 2 academic years, but for this kid, the school is rearranging the curriculum somewhat, which means he'll be closer to 17 or so before starting the clinical parts of medical school.

As you know, the tradional age for starting medical school here is at 18, after finishing A levels, I would happily have started at 16, after the end of compulsary schooling, though I know very very few people who would have done. So I grudingly accept that whilst for me the two years I spent doing A levels were a waste of time and effort they are valuable for a lot of people.

There are some graduate medicine programmes, and some people who take a five year programme after finishing a 3 or 4 year under graduate degree. I'm glad that it isn't standard post graduate. We need more doctors and increasing the training by asking for a needless degree will only working class applicants off futher.

After all we have to get into debt to go to university, after five years of university I will be in enough debt, around £20 000 after 7 years it would have been riduclous. I don't think there's any evidence that doctors who did a nother degree first will be better doctors.

My personal opinion on this is that Univesitys shuold be specialised a degree is there for people to study the subject that they love. The moralof the tales of people that are have changed career after taking a degree is that they should not have felt pressurised to go to university at the age of 1.

Degrees should not include pointless waffle that someone thinks that they should take to become a more rounded person. If you don't know what subject you love don't bother doing a degree until you can think of it. Don't make those of us who do know what we're doing suffer by broading our degree prospects. It's a waste of our time and taxpayers money.

Incidently I take Chinese as an extra cirrcular activity, it doesn't contribute to my degree, but I study it for fun...

Unless that was a typo, a £20,000 doesn't sound like a tremendous amount of debt for 5 years of med school.

In the US, a doctor can expect to come out of med school owing somewhere in the neighborhood of $100,000 for his education (about £70,000). Considering the difference in the number of years required, that's still way out of proportion. This is why kids are pressured to pick a career path right out of high school- the scholarship awards are only handed out to High School Seniors, not people going back to school in their mid 20's to late 30's, and getting those scholarships is about the only way to make a significant dent in the debt you'll incur.

Thanks Lady Scott. It seems a lot to me, and it seems a lot to the average talented child from a poor background who is considering whether to go to University or get a job. It's also worth remembering that doctors here are paid a lot less than they are in the US I think. We don't have the option of the disgusting practice of private medicine *spit* until we are well into our late thirties. Not that NHS doctors are underpaid far from it, and most of the younger doctors get free accomodation as well.

It's very easy to forget the amount that we're funded by the state for medical education in this country. Another reason I have a problem with private medicine here.

Having just worked out my debt it will be around £28 000, once I've added on the money I owe to the bank. I'm lucky as my parents are poor I don't pay any tution fees at all.

Our parents aren't expected to contribute at all if we're over 21 and have lived independly for over 2 years. Another reason not to encourage your children to go to university at 18!

Actually, there are quite a lot of scholarships and grants available in the US *only* to older students -- people going to university after 5 or more years working, having kids, etc. And the financial aid (loan) packages available to such students are exceedingly better than the packages that graduating high school seniors can get.

The people who have the hardest time getting scholarships and loan money are young adults who've taken a year or two between high school and college, especially if they've been living with their parents during that time (as that affects whether you're considered a "dependent" or "independent" as far as financial aid goes).

I think that part of the problems with the education system (in the UK at least) is that at school everything is focussed towards exams and passing them as opposed to actually knowing the worth of what you're learning and how it relates to the bigger picture. The idea that students have to get A grades to have learnt anything shouldn't always be true. Education has become warped so that a general development of students is virtually non-existant. As I'm currently still at school I find that students are encouraged to learn most of the stuff parrot-fashion and a lot of people pass without knowing terribly much about the subject at all.

On another point I don't think that when I come out of school after A-level that I'll know very much about how to function in the world of work. Work experience seems to be fairly useless for a lot of people as most of the time all the students see are a few things that have been choreographed for the day etc. I think it'd be worthwhile to spend some time actually doing things that happen in the "real-world" eg using scientific skills to design a substance for cleaning an oil-slick or mixing hand-cream.

I feel that students are often pushed into the idea of university even as they leave junior school. And even now where there are supposedly more options available, teachers still force students to apply simply because "They're bound to regret not applying to university". Careers advice never tells you anything useful like how many hours certain jobs take, average salaries, the demand for careers etc. but rather seems to take the line:"Whatever you want to do is great and it doesn't matter whether you want to study needlework with nuclear physics."

The link between a worthwhile job and a well-paid salary also seems to be stressed too much. I think teaching, for example, is an essential job to the whole community but it isn't well financed and many people who train as teachers decide to leave to go into other professions. (Both my parents happen to be teachers who have become disillusioned with education in general.)

Having to achieve targets, meet criteria, pass exams and constantly keep up with sometimes unrealistic goals seems to have taken the joy out of learning. Many of my peers at school don't really enjoy any of the subjects they take but simply take them because they need them for university entrance.

Finally, I think that education needs to get back to basics and sort them out before any real change can happen.

wq

I agree with that. My German teacher recommended that I record myself speking German and play it back while I sleep :/ Also my psychology teacher, about half way through the year said "I cant continue to teach why this material is relevant and finish the cirriculm"

I think we try to spead our education too thin. Nowadays kids are doing 10-12 subjects at GCSE 4 or 5 at AS and 3 at A level.

Firstly I think its too many exams, and secondly I think its spreading the subjects too thin.

My girls have all got part-time jobs, whilst doing their A levels, this hopefully teaches them about some realities of life.

My youngher sister did 5 A levels and my brother did 6. got all As in them as well. It makes me feel completely inadequate! though of course they were harder in my Day!

I've found that my friends who graduated after a three year degree, without every doing any holiday or part time work, are having difficultly getting their careers off the ground. Then again I know one person who deserved a first, and was very keen to do a post graduate degree who ended up with a 2.2 and unable to do a post gradate course, because she spent her final year working in a night club during term time.