University degree .. between yesterday and today
Taghreed Ibrahim Al -Tasan
Majid was sitting on the tip of the sofa, contemplating his parents ’faces while talking about his future as if they knew him more than him.!
His father said with his confident voice: “There is no future without a university degree … medicine or engineering at least.”
His mother replied, “No one respects you if you have a testimony.”
But Majid was thinking about something else.
He does not want medicine, nor engineering, not even management.!
He wants to become a film maker, who works on a digital project that he started in secret, and he knows him with a steady income that sometimes exceeds what his potential university graduates receive ..
But he is afraid of the tone of disappointment, and from an inferior view that may not be said, but it feels.!
He sat between them silent … not because without opinion, but because he knows that what he sees as logic, others see it as reckless.!
Since when was the talent compared to a testimony?
And since when was the passion for society to be satisfied with contentment?
Let us agree as adults and specialists, that in the past years, the university degree was the greatest dream of the family and the son together.
It was the clearest standard of success, the golden card of the stable function, social standing, and societal acceptance.
It was the only key to crossing the future gate, talking about it in the language of holiness, the diligent student is the one who crowned a university seat, and then with a guaranteed future ..
But we must believe and admit that time has changed. The world has turned from before.
Today, we ask: Is the university degree still holding the same sparkle? Or did it become just a leaf framed on the wall, do not necessarily represent efficiency and do not open the doors as it was?
The reality of the market says a lot.!
We see graduates without jobs, and at the same time we see creators with creative thought without certificates, they made their way to merit, and the practical reality has also shown digital skills that have become more feasible than four academic years.!
Did the academic path become more option than it is a necessity?
Is it fair to measure the future only by having a university degree?
Today we are facing a fundamental shift in the concepts of society towards education.
The question “What do you want to be?” More complicated than just “What will you study?”, And many students seemed to have lost a passion for university degree, or at least they no longer see it as a single way.!
Here, a more urgent question arises:
Have our children lost confidence in university education, or are they simply no longer seeing the only way to achieve self -realization?
Is the young man at the age of eighteen have sufficient awareness to decide his way?
Or is he a victim of family pressure, the noise of the times, and a contradictory reality that does not give him the opportunity to quiet thinking?
On the other hand, have universities played their role in modernizing and renewing?
Or is it still taught with the same models, and graduated students with expectations that are not in line with the market?
Is the problem with the certificate, or in the education system that needs flexible updates that keep pace with the requirements of the times and its transformations far from the traditional style that we are used to?
Nobody can deny the importance of a university degree, especially in some disciplines.
But it is certain that it is no longer sufficient alone, and it is no longer the only way, and perhaps in the eyes of many people no longer inspiring as it was.
Philosophers have always asked: Are we the one who chooses the road, or is the road imposed on us?
In the event of a university degree, it seems that the path today is no longer imposed as before, but it is also no longer clear enough to be chosen with confidence.
We need to redefine university education, and link it to reality, not with wishes.
We need to teach our children how to think, not how to satisfy others. To give them tools, not decisions, and accompany them in the choice, not to impose it on them.
What we need today is not only a testimony, but an intellectual system that restores consideration to education in all its forms, and gives young people to the tools of awareness and discrimination. We need to teach our children how to choose, not just what they choose.
To guide them to make their way, not to draw it completely for them.
In the end, the question is not: Is the university degree still important?
Rather: How do we make something meaningful at a time when all meanings changed?
