Nov 26, 2011

How well have you utilized what you have?


First let me point out that complaining is a pedestrian term and it shouldn’t inspire you, this is rather calling it like I see it. The best way to kick it off is perhaps by saluting you for having sailed through your higher education successfully if you have. In this country where only a few are endowed with what you have, my congratulations can only be in order.

For the sake of arguing, let me refer to you as the cream of the nation but you need not to be carried away. Society may care less of what you have but what you know. In other words your degree or diploma is as good as its utility at your place of work. If you have a clue of what I mean, proceed to the next paragraph.

The job market these days seek for very high qualifications. Advanced university degrees have left first degree holders with no chance of joining the professional working class. As a result, society is no longer in fancy of mare first degrees, let alone diplomas. Desperation to have degrees is at its peak. Universities are smiling all the way to the bank owing to the number of desperate cases pushing it hard just to obtain that glossy paper.

Somebody once said that the biggest problem with a rat race is that even if you win, you are still a rat. Put it better if you can. I hate getting into the politics of performance but the professional reputation of many sectors in Kenya really sucks despite being controlled by “advanced degree holders.” By the way did you watch the striking dons last month? That was the caliber of our advanced degree holders laid bare. Their students of bad grammar, silly arguments and trouble in the streets are only chips off their old blocks.

I may sound mischievous but I am not so misguided. Take our forty gang cabinet as a sample. The few professors and doctors among them are the top performers right? I am told some of them are Harvard schooled.

It would have been encouraging if these advanced degrees added value to our nation and not reduced it to a bourgeois third world state it is. Did you know that over ninety five percent of top entrepreneurs in the world are not even degree holders? In my humble opinion, this advanced degree rat race situation will only perfect egoism.

Of particular interest is the tendency of my young graduate friends who have been caught up in this mess. Some of these kids are hardly into their first professional jobs but they are already rushing against each other into master’s degree classes. This degree has become fashionable rather than necessary. You can tell by how they vibe about it, no sense of plan whatsoever.

How will a master’s degree add value to a twenty six years old hack probably not even registered to any professional body? The rush to nowhere may be characteristic of my generation but we may soon have a country full of good for nothing advanced degree holders. 

Kosprin

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