Education for working life
Education for working life
I read with interest Mr. Mochtar Buchori's opinion about superschools and education. He raises a valid point in Misperceptions hinder changes in education (The Jakarta Post, Jan. 11, 1996).
Young people are led to believe that the only useful learning comes from attending college, listening to professors talk from a platform and reproducing required information on occasions called examinations.
Developing countries have been intimidated by the undisputed acceptance of the assumption that a population made out of PhDs is a precondition for economic take-off. Following the conventional wisdom that the number of people in universities correlates with the potential for economic development; developing countries ended up with more engineers than technicians, more doctors than nurses and, in extreme cases, with architects but no carpenters.
A surplus of university graduates feeds developed countries with developing countries' best educated people. The India Institute of Technology (IIT) keeps producing highly qualified people for export to the U.S., Canada, UK and Australia. A survey of 1986 graduates of IIT has shown that nearly half of the graduates are now abroad. IIT spends an average US$12,000 on each graduate in subsidies. According to official estimates, the annual loss from migration by the institute's graduates could be more than $4.5 million. That means a developing country is subsidizing developed ones.
In contrast, the system of every country with a broad educational system is to profoundly train a few people in a very narrow field. These are the ones that strap-on a couple of boosters to a rocket to send a satellite into geostationary orbit or develop a new technique to remove tumors. (With the occasional paleoclimatologist saying the ice caps are melting). A very shallow education is spread over the rest of the population. Just enough for the proverbial "porter of a hotel or cashier at the bank." Many countries developed using this system.
What developing countries need is a program to direct the majority of its students after finishing compulsory school at the age of 15 or 16, to two to four-year apprenticeships to prepare them for working life. This would prepare them as middle-level technicians: electrotechnicians, electronic technicians, mechanics, laboratory technicians and tradespeople of all kinds.
OSVALDO COELHO
Bandung, West Java