Edward on Tertiary Education (response)

Ed, from Battersea in London, shares his thoughts on improving tertiary education. He emphasizes the importance of practical learning and apprenticeship-style courses. Ed believes universities should align more closely with industry and offer relevant courses. He also suggests students gain work experience before pursuing further studies. Financial barriers are another challenge that needs addressing.

Practical learning
Apprenticeship-style courses
Alignment with industry
Work experience before further studies
Financial barriers

improving tertiary education
practical learning
apprentice-style courses
university degrees
relevant outcomes
follow passions
institutional barriers
industry alignment
work experience
financial barriers

Hello, my name is Ed. I'm in Battersea, London, and I'm answering a question on how to improve and ideas around improving tertiary education. A bit of context, I didn't go to university, albeit I went, but then I dropped out. That was mostly because I had an expectation to go and everybody else was going, but I hadn't found what I wanted to study. So my experience subsequently has been that the people that I've hired who have had degrees, I've really looked at that as having had the discipline to study for three years on their own. And I've hired as many people with and without university degrees equally.

As far as improvements are concerned, I suppose maybe I come from a slightly different perspective. However, I can't help but feel that practical application, practical learning is often much more rewarding than theoretical. So I'd like to see many more apprentice-style courses. I think, as a general level of quality of university degrees that are out there at the moment, I don't have that much experience in it, but I think that they're pretty good. My mind always harks back to the fact that half of the jobs and the roles and the topics that people will be studying vocationally in the future don't even exist yet.

And I'm also conscious of the fact that I've got two teenage daughters who will at some stage, relatively soon, we're hurtling towards them going into the secondary, but they will be in the tertiary education system pretty soon. I want them to study what they're into because I feel like following the passions that they have now will put them in a good place to understand better what they can be doing in the future. I think also that reflects quite well with the fact that unless you're going to be a lawyer or a doctor, you don't necessarily have to study the topic that you're going to be doing in the workplace.

I think the biggest barriers are the institutional barriers. I think universities probably need to work much more closely with industry to provide courses that have much more relevant and applicable outcomes. I think maybe a crazy idea would be to have people coming out of school, going into the workplace for an amount of time first, and then being given the opportunity after a year or two, having had a couple of different jobs to study.

And the other biggest one barrier, I think, is the financial barrier. So all of that in three minutes. I hope that was helpful.

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Edward