- College students should base their choice of a field of study on the availability of jobs in that field.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the recommendation and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, describe specific circumstances in which adopting the recommendation would or would not be advantageous and explain how these examples shape your position.________________________________________
Stating that college students should base their choice of a field of study on the availability of jobs in that field, the speaker asserts that students should be guided by clear, specific goals related to their future careers rather than following their diverse internal demands. In some sense, it is true that practical utility is one of the important criteria in choosing a field of study. In my opinion, however, this view is ignoring both complementary and supplementary benefits for students of being exposed to diverse, albeit seemingly irrelevant to their actual careers, fields of knowledge in their intellectual pursuits.
Of course, few would disagree that college students today may benefit more from concentration on accumulating practical skills and knowledge than from unsystematic pursuits of elusive ideals. Considering ever-narrowing job market entry, a student is well advised when she is dissuaded from pursuing subjects that have little to do with the likelihood of her actual success. In fact, many businesses that try to reduce costs for re-educating new employees prefer as their new family members students who have specialized skills in their primary field of interests. In addition, when it comes to building a personal stronghold which will serve as a foundation for future competition, concentrating one’s efforts during the college years on certain practical field of study seems critical. Instead of wasting time and energy on so many impractical issues, a student guided by a clear direction can form a strong base of his or her expertise, which in turn helps him or her to treat duties with confidence and proficiency. This also supports the wisdom of the strategy to focus one’s intellectual efforts on certain subjects that are directly related to his likelihood of practical success.
The speaker asserts that education must be guided by specific goals and pragmatic purposes rather than other idealistic ones. For several reasons, it can be strongly supported that education should not be led by the traditional concept of ‘learning for learning’s sake.’ However, no matter how old it is, the concept cannot be discarded easily for the following reasons.
Needless to say, it is undeniable that excessive emphasis on the pure academic interest is outdated and even detrimental to effective education. For most students who need to enter into job market after 4 years’ of college education, being overly immersed to the pure theories would widen and deepen the gap between their interests and job market’s demands. Because most companies want to employ not the wise theorists who make important decisions for the company’s fortunes from the newcomers but ones who have strength in their duties and practical knowledge to deal with given tasks, students who are purely anointed by learning for learning’s sake would suffer from their lack of smooth adaptability. The fact that many scholar-type students fail to do ‘soft landing’ in their early works says that academic purity is sometimes harmful to students, thus means the failure of school’s responsibility.
Nevertheless, purity in learning does not always mean the vice to our modern education. For most students who are forced to gain visible achievements in diverse subjects, thus need to shift their academic focus every semester or every month or even every week, concentrated efforts made into one loved field may relieve students from being superficial in their intellectual journey. Personally, for example, my pure passion to mathematics which is not required to my major, psychology makes me enlightened by giving me the chance to explore one field deeply. Without the experience of the almost obsession-like interest in mathematics, I would not have had my current idea that concepts and subtopics of psychology have the mathematical sophistication and systems. In fact, learning for learning’s sake can still contribute to our modern education by helping students to overcome the otherwise superficiality of their study.
Moreover, pursuit of pure knowledge can be salubrious to our learning in other ways. For some advanced level students who are exposed to diverse forms of practical alluring every day, learning for learning’s sake would make the power to be free from being irresolute. Because deeply held academic interest in one field can play a role of beacon or pivot for students, it can prevent them from being disoriented and wavering in their long journey and guide to their original, pure interest whenever they lost their desirable paths. When asked how he could study the field of psychology for over five decades, the famous psychologist, Jean Lepen said that he has looked for the first year he was interested in the field and could feel pure happiness every time he feels fatigued and uninspired. This suggests that learning for learning’s sake is meaningful to education in that it can make our academic interests continued and permanent.
In sum, despite the problems of lessened adaptability in practical world, the benefits of pure academic interest to facilitate both to overcome superficiality in learning and to continue one’s pursuit without vacillation tell us that learning for learning’s sake is never an obsolete concept even in our modern society. Therefore, I cannot fully agree with the speaker’s assertion. How could a student develop into a great scholarship without experiencing profound meanings in his or her field and overcoming the ever-coming trials?