[issue: educational institutions]

[xbeiba]

Educational institutions should actively encourage their students to choose fields of study that will prepare them for lucrative careers.

 

Issue: encourage to choose lucrative study

position: not to encourage

perspective: assumption

1. educational institutions know what will be lucrative careers in the future

2. lucrative career is a good one

3. choose what to study now means what to do in the future

4. more encouragements are good for students

 

The statement indicates students will have a lucrative career when given encouragement to make choices on the fields to study. I hardly agree with that in that the assumptions underlying the statement have some flaws and holes, which one may find obvious evidences to contradict. What I think is better is to let students to choose what fields they would like to study and determine what kind of life they may want to live in the future.

The first assumption that could be contradicted is that educational institutions know what the careers that will be lucrative are. Actually, as fast as the pace in which the society in modern times run, hardly can individuals and specific institutions predict what kind of jobs or vocations are career ones in the future. Though a trend of economy and politics is widely conjectured by various agents as investment banks or government institutions, accidents always happen amid the progress of the world as a whole. In addition, as trends are given, they are not trustworthy enough and always changing. For example, one might not envision that a tragedy as 9.11 would happen, which totally changed the way people of the world think about the terrorism and the way people live. After that a lot of universities witnessed a decrease in the quantity of researchers and the quality of their study for the admission to the top universities became hard for international students as a protection of the nation against potential terrorists. For the second cogent example, the burst of the financial crisis few years ago led to a big amount of bankruptcy and unemployment, which changed the financial policies and systems and thus led to a great impact on everyday life. Consequently, educational institutions are not capable of making such predictions as better fields to study currently, which are lucrative after a period.

The second assumption behind the statement is an assertive one, suggesting that a lucrative career is a career that all students are willing to have. True that many people desire money and reputation, regarding those as a hallmark of a successful life, there are still considerable group of youngsters striving for a different way of life; they don’t care much about possession and fame, nor do they adore celebrities, but the truth is they are craving of a pacific life without much din and titles, just conducting adequate behavior and doing what they think is beneficial, as doing research in a scientific realm, or retreating to have more leisurely days. So education institutions should not see lucrative life as a goal for all students. People may not want to be forced to accept a sole concept of values, as the dimension of the society is not strictly restrained.

Additionally, choosing the fields that the educational institutions recommend to study in college or in lower grades, students may not proceed with these fields in the future, because, as more common as it can be seen now, people focusing on a certain field of study change their minds in the middle of their career, on one hand because of their awareness of a more appropriate kind of job or field for him or her, one the other hand, because they find the jobs which he or she is doing is not lucrative any more, as already mentioned in the second paragraph. In this case, the suggestions given by those institutions are not likely to achieve their original intention, and a better way for them to prompt students ought to lie elsewhere.

At lase, I don’t agree with the point that decisions like which career to pick, are better not disrupted by others. Suggestions from these educational institutions may be beneficial for students, but they just do not know why they are conductive to their career, simply because of the shortage of the essential social experiences and an insight of their life. Once they accept the encouragement, studying the fields they are told to study, they can have fun, but they lose the right to choose, and the most important thing is that they fail to go through the process of making their own decisions, an ability they should have during their students life, and the lack of which might result in many disadvantages obstructing their later careers. For instance, students in many counties are being repeatedly inculcating the concept that the only way to achieve a successful career is to study hard without any other abilities cultivated, just the very abilities that leads to a malaise spirits and unwanted life of these students after years. As a result, I recommend that student should by their own speculation determine what is good for them to chase in the future.

In sum, I think the best way to have a better career lies on the ability to exploit critical thinking and an independent spirit that should be conducted and learned to have in school life, other than be encouraged by educational institutions.