RE: UKNM: great ad, bad marketing?

[Peterson, Jonathan]

> Tim....re:graduates....is it there fault, or are the theories

> that we teach

> them so outdated due to the fact that the majority of

> lectures have not

> 'worked' in any industry for over a decade! This industry in

> particular

> needs to play a more pro-active role in education, so that we

> stop getting

> people that still thing that a SWOT analysis and sticking the

> however many

> Ps you can remember will serve you good!


I don't really subscribe to this view. It is not the job of universities to

provide inudstry with a nice supply of pre-formatted workers. It's the job

of universities to improve the mental faculties of their students.


No matter what you teach them, graduates will have a huge amount to learn

when they start work. I look for people with the ability and _INTEREST_ in

learning that they will need. The last thing I want is some 20 year old who

did a 'Java Servlets in the Web Environment' module at university and will

now attempt to start every customer job thinking he knows just how to go

about this. I'd far rather have a student who was taught proper programming

techniques in Haskell or some other quirky and mind-expanding language, and

is now keen to learn not only about PHP/Java/Vignette/Perl/etc but also

about all the other stuff that goes with actually doing work for customers.


What I _would_ like to see are more work placement options as part of

University courses, so graduates have at least some experience of real work.


The other thing the industry is sorely lacking is any concept of training

staff. People will pay an agency thousands and thousands to find an employee

with relevant experience, but won't even consider giving a junior employee

money for a training course or even a weeks paid leave to let them teach

themselves. Of course decent training courses are rather thin on the

ground.... there's a business opportunity for someone....



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