Some people believe that university education should focus on the skills of employment for the future. Others think university education should focus on academic study only. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

Employers are always lamenting  the unfortunate gap between what

students

have learnt in university and what they are expected to know in order to be job-ready, which has set many people thinking: what on earth should these

students

learn in school, academic knowledge or job

skills

? A populace  with extensive academic background is pivotal  in today’s world. After months or years of work with experiments and sets of data, these young

students

may be able to contribute incremental knowledge  on a question

that is

 plaguing  people, advancing knowledge in a particular field like math, astronomy, or politics.

This

is the very reason why governments and scholars set up universities in the

first

place: to accumulate young intellectuals, test hypotheses through academic research, and

then

apply the outcomes. For

this

, it is not difficult to understand the view of some people that tertiary education should prepare these young adults for academic

studies

.

However

, there is a difference between what universities are expecting in

students

and what recruiters are looking for. To those employers, the value added from a university degree substantially decreases as they sometimes think a reliance on the academic

studies

has robbed  the young of soft

skills

. To confound  these sceptics , faculty should

also

attach great importance to critical

skills

of employment in teaching, equipping the young adults with problem-solving, collaboration, learnability, to name but a few.

Such

skills

, to robots, are hard to emulate,

thus

adding value to the young candidates and enabling them to impress employers more. In conclusion, university graduates are expected to be rigorous as they were doing academic

studies

and, pragmatically speaking, secure a high-paying job at the same time. These are likely a result of the focus on both academic

studies

and soft

skills

of employment. Academic-study teaching solely, clearly, is far from enough.