Whether or not universities should provide more programs related to vocations and work experiences than academic programs is quite contraversy thesedays. Some people say that university should concentrate on academic studies and programs rather than job programs. However, I strongly believe that univerisities should be required to offer programes related to jobs and careers with following reasons.
To begin with, universities have the obligation to provide various programs related to jobs because the job market in Korea has became so comopetitive. It was easy to get a job about 30 years ago because the Korea industry was just about to develop and the economic situation was booming. However, nowadays, the economic situation in Korea is significantly depressed because of the global economic effects such as the decline of dollar value, or the collapse of global companies like Lehman Brothers. The impact was so huge that Korean companies started suffering from lack of money and job market in Korea worsen. The number of positions available are scarce while the number of people who graduated university is increasing, so the job market is getting competitive and university students should be more talented when it comes to jobs they want to get, and to survive. Since most university students are preparing to get jobs after their graduation, university should give them opportunities to learn and be trained about jobs and careers.
On top of that, universities need to give programs related to occupations for their students because university students donot have enough job experiences. To be specific, in Korea, students usually spend most of their time on studying because of Confucianism controlling the whole society in Korea. Confucianism is an old theory, way of life, or religion, but it still rules the Korean's basic way of thinking. Most importantly, Confucianism emphasize the importance of education. Education is the value that should be persued more than anything. Because of that, parents who raised under Confucianism make their children only study. And Koreans think that the standard of high education is university certificate so students from elementary to high schools work so hard to get into the univeristy. Especially high school students their all day sitting in front of their desks, books in school from 7 am to 11 pm. Due to this hard working required to students, they can't have any part-time job. This situation of lack of job experience will not be changed unless university offers them a chance to have job-related programs since the job market- especially internship that current university students can have- is hard to get into.
In brief, universities have to set programs related to careers for their students because the job market in Korea is getting more and more competitive, which is very tough to students, and because students need to be exposed to a job experiences. |