Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing bad about providing young people with information about careers. All education is good. But what is wrong is influencing or advising people whose only full time experience is school to make career choices long before they understand what a full time career is, and how it will impact on their adult life.

I feel strongly about this because, like all career professionals, most of my time is taken up working with clients in their late twenties and thirties who made career decisions too early, who hate what they do for a living, often to the point of depression or worse, who are desperate for a change and who do not know where to turn.

Often these careers are chosen at school. Many students enter higher education convinced that they know what career they want. They take vocational courses or study subjects that can only lead in one direction. Ten years or so later many of them deeply regret their choices. But they have been wedded to their particular career path for so long that not only do they find it difficult to change; they also feel guilty about changing. And that makes it even harder to change. They feel are letting so many people down, themselves not the least. And now the government seems to be suggesting that they make the same mistakes earlier, at an even more immature age, based on even less self knowledge and information.

Unfortunately this is driven by an economic agenda. The argument seems to be that if young people gear themselves up for a specific career at an early age they will become more effective economic units, which will bring greater prosperity to both them and society at large. Has nobody in the Department for Children, Schools and Families considered that if they are unhappy in their careers, economic units will underperform, with negative consequences for themselves and society at large?

According to the DCSF the new careers education will make sure that every young person, “whatever their background can aim for the top”. If “the top” is where this policy came from, I can’t think of a better reason for aiming elsewhere.

Related posts:

1. An Unimpressive Higher Education Review It looks as if Lord Mandelson has fallen into the...
2. Funding Higher Education In a bid to reduce the demand on public funds...
3. Our Careers Are Becoming Our Lives In the film The Wrestler Mickey Rourke plays an ageing...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.