Aim of university education is to help graduates get better jobs

IELTS Writing Task 2 with sample answer.

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Some people believe the aim of university education is to help graduates get better jobs. Others believe there are much wider benefits of university education for both individuals and society.

Discuss both views and give your opinion.

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Write at least 250 words.

Sample Answer:
Education, particularly university education, helps climb the ladder of success in this cut-throat competitive world. However, when it comes to the point that what the objective of university education is, there is sharp differences on this matter. In many circles, it is contended that the purpose of university education is to helps graduates get better jobs, while others feels that the true objective is to quest for knowledge, wisdom so the individuals can enlighten themselves as well as the society. While both the sides have merits, I incline to the second notion.

To start with, it goes without saying that higher education is deemed as extremely important in the modern contemporary society, and for most people a university degree has become the essential ticket to get a well-paid job. Even Barack Obama stresses saying this that “in a global market where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer a pathway to opportunity—it is a prerequisite”. Actually, employers tend to recruit university graduates because they have already prove their talent, determination, attitude to accomplishing goal as these are the crucial aspects of an ideal employee.

On the contrary, many a people argue that the core objective of tertiary education should point at how to extract knowledge and how to create new knowledge. That is to say that university education should stress on quality teaching and research programs so that the students are able to create, translate and disseminate knowledge and wisdom to advance the nation, the mankind and, to sharp their mind both spiritually and intellectually as well. They outcry for not to diminish the broader role into mere corporate interest.

In my opinion, I agree that university should not be the factory for producing workers. I believe that if it is it would the mockery of higher education that only focuses on employable graduates. No doubt, it is a good idea to produce more workers regarding short term benefit. But the notion is very devastating in terms of long-term benefits. When you come up with an approach educating students to compatible to workplace, this will result in producing some kind of robots. Let me clarify a bit more. A student with only job skills means he can do only those tasks he is coded like robots. In contrast, if a student has a broad understanding of concepts through seeing it in the context of wide spectrum and has keen knowledge on logic behind the concepts, he then not only produce new knowledge but also can work in innovative fashion.

In a nutshell, what I would like to say that higher education’s objectives should be pursuit in terms of broader perspectives and the job competence would be its logical consequence.