‘Original’ degrees and unemployment

RAWALPINDI: Gone are the days when an undergraduate degree meant job security. Nowadays, there are hundreds of unemployed graduates scouring newspapers for job ads and going from pillar to post in search of a decent job. As a matter of fact, a decent job now implies any odd job that gives one a feeling of being employed. Engineers have switched over from technical jobs to lowly paid ones that employ neither their skills nor their practical expertise. Doctors have to face a similar fate once they pass through the rigours of medical school and face the harsh realities of the world outside.

Discontentment with our educational system or perhaps the desire for luxuries forces most of our elite to send children abroad for education. And now, the recent prognosis by Law Minister Babar Awan about Bilawal Bhutto being next in the line to inherit the prime minister’s office suggests that a new generation, born and bred abroad will take over the reins of a country it knows little about. Our class-centric education system requires complete over-hauling if we want to see the likes of scientists and technocrats emerge from it. But with the degrees of our ruling elite under scrutiny, this seems like a Herculean task for the current administration of fake degree holders. The least they can do is to show mercy for jobless graduates with original degrees and devise policies for their employment immediately.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 16^th, 2010.