Half-baked can’t be kneaded

I am sure you must have heard the sentiment that “our graduates are half-baked,” and like many others, I too am guilty of regurgitating this statement with a sense of authority and conviction, even though I had not a single iota of proof that this was the case.

Now, apart from regurgitating statements, I also happen to have developed what today feels like a curse: being a lifelong learner. This means that, unlike many, I do not have the privilege of enjoying the bliss of ignorance.

For the uninitiated, the term "lifelong learner" means:

“A person who continues to learn new skills and competencies long after they have completed their formal education.”

I suspect you are asking yourself, hopefully not aloud, what this has to do with the issue of being half-baked and not being kneaded (no spelling error there; I do mean "knead" as in massaging dough).

During one of my escapades through a bookshop, I came across a book titled “Investor Politics” by John Hood . Why I bought the book is beyond my comprehension, but bought it I did, and therefore, not reading it was not an option.

Unlike with a bad movie, which I will quickly stop watching (even though I come from a generation where walking out of a movie theatre was a no-no), when it comes to a book, for some strange reason, I will read it to the end, even if the content is as dry as a 3-day old cob of roasted maize.

Fortunately, that was not the case with this book, and if I had not read it, I would still be blissfully ignorant about our graduates being half-baked.

The book covers a vast number of issues that I am passionate about, from the origin of the social security system to the death of education, with the latter being the topic I want to cover lightly in this article. Based on the engagement, I will decide if it needs to be explored more deeply.

What is Education?

Not being a native English speaker, I too, just like the majority of those who weren’t fortunate enough to have their lullabies sung in perfect English, have a tendency to use certain words interchangeably, in this case being "education" and "training."

After reading the book, it became clear that I had been denying myself the opportunity to improve my intelligence by being pedestrian in the use of the English language.

So, universities provide education, not training. What employers need are not well-educated people but those able to be trained, which explains why many employers have graduate trainee programs that allow them to knead the unbaked graduates to meet their needs.

Education is therefore about providing the learner, think CBC lingo, with a broad knowledge base and critical thinking, whereas training is about imparting specific skill sets and the practical applications of parts of their broad knowledge base.

Who is half-baked?

Therefore, when an employer says that a graduate is half-baked, what they are really saying is that they do not want to train the graduate to understand their organisation's specific application of the employee’s broad knowledge base. Worse still is when an organisation poaches an employee and then wonders why they are not performing as well as they did in the other company.

To try and simplify this using my technical education, it is like a carpenter walking into a hardware shop asking for a mahogany wood band saw. The manufacturer makes a broad-based cutting appliance that takes any blade that it spins around. What material one is cutting isn’t an issue of concern to the band saw manufacturer.

It is for me, the carpenter, to choose which blade to fit into the band saw depending on the material that I need to cut, which is analogous to the training.

The statement "half-baked" could be valid but not in the way that I believe many employers use the term when harassing local academics.

Training isn't Education

When a university purports to provide training for its students, aka making them industry-ready, they will end up with a partially competent person, as would happen if you removed a loaf of bread from an oven before the set time for baking it, thus ending up with a half-baked loaf.

Now, the problem with a half-baked loaf of bread is that putting it back in the oven will not fully bake it, nor can you knead it with fresh dough to start the process all over again. With actual bread, the situation is hopeless, and the only option is to toss it into the bin. However, I want to believe that with our graduates, the situation can be remedied.

We also need to prevent this from persisting by stopping our universities from trying to bake the bread. Instead, they should prepare the dough and leave the kneading and proofing to the corporate world, which will have them long enough to get them fully baked.

The opening of a bakery by one of our most prestigious universities should be of concern as they are dabbling in a space that is not theirs, in the same way as they are doing in the classroom.

In summary, education should focus on equipping students with a broad knowledge base and critical thinking skills. Training, on the other hand, should focus on imparting specific skills and practical applications.

By understanding and respecting the distinction between education and training, we can better prepare our graduates for the demands of the corporate world and ensure they are not half-baked but fully prepared to meet the challenges ahead.