'Maybe we could go back to being unashamedly elitist and get rid of the dumbed-down varsity idea ... that everyone ought to get a degree.' Illustration / Anna Crichton
Book learnin' gets no respect. But maybe the universities should do more to deserve it.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that if you gather together a bunch of blokes of a certain age who have started their own businesses, sooner or later, after discussing compliance costs, the RMA and the new-model BMW, one of them will say something like: "I never went to university
and it never did me any harm." In business circles, it's common to be distrustful of that book learnin'.
University is synonymous not with success and achievement, but with "sucking on the public teat" (not my expression, trust me) and angry women. Real people learn at the university of life. So I feel rather sheepish telling anyone that I am going back to university fulltime next year, rather than doing something economically righteous like selling merino jockstraps online.
Funnily enough, those BMW-driving business owners may, without taking a breath, also have a medium-sized moan about not being able to get staff with the right skills. Join any dots there, chaps? Then again, maybe, like me, they think some things about our tertiary education sector are a bit thick.
Yes, please insert apologetic shrug here; I know ivory towers are not really a top priority in our dire times. But why do we have so many universities bombarding us with expensive advertising campaigns? Massey University tells me on television and buses that rugby is one of our "most innovative industries". AUT is the university for the changing world. The University of Otago will find you your place in the world. The University of Auckland is New Zealand's leading university, apparently. It's all a bit unseemly. And surely they should just be picking the kids with the best grades rather than enticing any punter in like they're the home-shopping network?
