Co-curricular Work

I attended a short briefing at Taylor’s University last week, where they asked us for comment some new things that they were embarking on.

However, I took the opportunity to put forth some suggestions on how universities might help improve some of the problems that I see with young graduates today – a lack of responsibility and discipline.

While I would certainly like to see sandwich programmes for our undergraduate degrees, I know that it would be very difficult to get that idea past the MQA. However, it might be easier to just award co-curricular points for students to do part-time or vacation work.

Unlike internships, it would not need to be related to their field of study. In fact, it might be better if it wasn’t related to their field of study. Even a simple sales job at a hypermarket or a simple waitress job at the local kopitiam, would be good.

It would give the students an opportunity to face the real world and to see what things are like out there. If they got some scolding from the customers, all the better for building character!

I doubt that any university would do it though.