My exploration of the jobs market, although half-hearted, has shown up a few interesting and in some cases disturbing facts. The first among these is that a degree appears to act as a simple indicator that a prospective employee can think with more than their hands, and is therefore used as a filtering mechanism. I should imagine that very few people really think that only graduates are worth employing, but equally I can sympathise with the view that there are so many graduates around that trawling through the mass of the rest of us is more trouble than it's worth.
My inclination is to look for ways around this, as I have a long history of regarding higher education as a combined time-killer and connection-former with a piece of paper at the end of the process. However, having been rebuffed by the MI6 website (well, I think I'd be good at the spy stuff), I began to think the unthinkable: that a simpler solution would be simply to demolish the diploma deficit by doing a degree.
I hasten to say that it's only an option at this stage. Even so, though, complications begin to surface.
At this stage of my life I'm none too keen on taking three or more years out of earning. I doubt I'd ever make up the difference. If I had a solid wedding-photography business for weekends, say, as I have sometimes considered, then perhaps it might be possible to devote weekdays to full-time study. But I'm not convinced. That leaves distance learning.
Then there is the study subject to consider. Should that be merely something that interests me (hopefully enough to last throughout an entire course, which would be a first in my life), a purely functional subject intended to increase my employability in a particular area, or something midway if such a thing exists?
I'm not short of interests. I can imagine fruitfully studying Maths or maybe a more concrete type of Philosophy, but I suspect I'd be better occupied in something with visible results such as Engineering. I have often thought I'd like to get involved in Robotics, for example, or even to learn the formal aspects of software engineering. I'm partway through a tome by Bertrand Meyer, but I think there would be a lot of merit to being taught instead of merely learning in that area, as it is easy to skip important concepts while too ignorant even to see what I don't know.
Yet a look around what is on offer shows that distance learning is very much a poor relation to full-time education, and caters to the lowest common denominator. I can't (admittedly without a comprehensive trawl) see anything like the engineering courses, and the Maths I saw was aimed at people who might not even have a school qualification in the subject. I get the strong feeling I would be heading for frustration.
Welcome to life, everybody says, where there are no simple answers, not even to simple questions.
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I don’t think distance learning is a poor relation to full-time education, as judged by the standard or the standing of the degrees it leads to, or as judged by the quality of the teaching. Some of the Open University courses are excellent in every respect that matters. They just take a long time, and mainly suit people who need remunerative work at the same time to earn their bread and butter. If you already have some good passes in school-level subjects, you may be able to get exemption from the early parts of some courses.
There is a great shortage of people with degrees in Mathematics and in Engineering, so at least you could be sure that the skills you would acquire would be valued by someone.
Others can say it better than I, but a few words in defense of higher education seem appropriate.
Very little of what I do in my job today draws on specific things I learned while earning a bachelor's degree in 1970. There are occasional opportunities to quote my old Philosophy professor, or to dredge up the correct term for a statistical measure of central tendency.
There were, however, two characteristics of the collegiate experience that I think were important in making me the person I am today and both are characteristics that employers seek when evaluating candidates.
The first was simply seeing the activity through to the end. A university degree is not earned without effort and there are many opportunities to drop out. Persons with a degree have demonstrated that they can stay the course.
The second was the opportunity to be exposed to new ideas and to have my own ideas challenged. Here's a sample: "Describe five proofs of the existence of God and show how each is defective." In a typical undergraduate education the student is required to complete courses from a cross section of the available offerings. One does not really begin to specialize in an area until or unless he attempts an advanced degree. Employers are looking for people who can 'grow with the job' - who can evaluate their work on the fly and find better ways to achieve the business objectives. No one knows where new ideas originate and there are many workers who seem incapable of thinking at all, much less generating new ideas, so employers improve the odds of hiring people capable of thinking by demanding the degree.
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