On one of my regular tea breaks this week, I stumbled across an interesting BBC Radio 4 program. The familiar voices were weighing the benefits of gaining practical experience alongside degree courses. This is something America does much better than the UK.
Most college students here are encouraged to spend their summers gaining work experience or undertaking internships. There are also many more opportunities to gain experience in an industry as part of your college courses or in exchange for college credit. This means U.S. students come off their degree program already having gone some way to building up their resumes and knowing, more directly, the industry they want to start working in.
The UK seems to take a different angle. English education has an obsession for specialising. We are immediately out of sixth form and already being asked to choose one subject to study, to spend the next three years pouring out our mind, body and soul over. That’s all well and good for gaining in-depth knowledge and I by no means object to the English university system – indeed, I am proud of our institutions.
However, it does pose the problem that we have little dialogue between the arts and sciences. It also leaves little room for British degree courses to merge with practical experience. Because our studies are so specific, we tend to keep our education within the realms of the university.
I have found that placements and encouragement to gain experience are much more part of the American way. Perhaps this is because education here is partly based on preparation for industry, something British institutions do not yet acknowledge to such an extent. Or indeed tend not to be so concerned with. There is nowhere near as much encouragement to get hands-on work alongside your degree as there is here.
I spent another of my daily tea breaks researching and applying for summer internships here in the U.S., which of course turned into more of an extended and complicated few hours of sifting through incomprehensible application processes than a break. I’m in two minds. I admire the United States’ emphasis on constantly looking to gain practical experience. But after all the hours spent applying, I just hope it isn’t blighting the main focus of college students: college. At the end of the day, we are here to make use of our institution and benefit from the resources it offers as much as we can.
Perhaps my mother has it right. After retiring, she has begun an art degree. They offer her an intellectually directed education in art history alongside a practical course in making art itself. The course offers the best of both worlds.
I have no answers to this dilemma. But any which way you look at it, the job market just tells us to grab anything and everything we can that might help us along the way. Just keep moving. That’s what I have been telling myself.
Lucy Cheseldine is an English international student studying English literature. Her column runs weekly on Tuesdays.
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