Third-level education is not the only measure of success

What is misleadingly described as careers guidance at second-level is all too often nothing more than a run-through your third-level options, with little or no consideration for a career that doesn’t involve that sort of further education.

And while it goes without saying that learning is never lost on the student, sometimes you have to take stock – and the truth is that university is no more a panacea for life now than it was half a century ago.

Back then – and indeed more recently than that – further education was just one of many options; the civil service, the ESB, an apprenticeship or going straight into a job were just as realistic a route.

But now success – and certainly those awful school league tables which, admittedly, we also give oxygen to this week – comes down to just one thing; how many Leaving Certs did you manage to shoehorn into University or Institute of Technology.

Never mind that more than one in six first year students drop out of college each year – that’s more than 6,000 of them – and that NUIG’s rate of attrition is over ten per cent.

Because it’s not really their fault in the first place; they can only do the best with the students sent their way.

In Germany, around 30 per cent of students go on to third-level – and funnily enough, because that figure is on the rise, the universities are struggling to cope with numbers.

But many more move on to state-sponsored or approved apprenticeships in major manufacturers like Bosch or Mercedes or Audi, down to the small industrial operations right across the country.

Around 60 per cent of Germany’s young people worked as apprentices in 2014, combining classroom and on-the-job training.

The German model of apprenticeship requires that the students attend classes at a vocational school and spend time working at a company, splitting time between the two.

So it’s not like they aren’t furthering their education on all fronts.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.