18/10/2017 These days more emphasis is being placed on university education. Vocational training is not encouraged, and thus there are few qualified trades people. To which extent do you agree or disagree? v.2

Many aver tertiary education is being promoted while no attention is paid to motivating people to take vocational training. Consequently, there is an insufficient number of well-prepared craftsmen. I disagree with this prospect and below the reasons on which my stance is based will be discussed in details. Primarily, the popularity of having a college or university degree keeps steadily growing while the interest toward vocational programs has consistently been diminishing in recent years. This stance is supported by statistics that demonstrates almost ninety percent of yesterday pupils dream of getting a tertiary education while only seven percent see non-college education desirable. In addition, a recent research conducted in such countries as Germany, France, Canada, the USA and China showcases that parents often perceive pursuing a higher education as a necessity for being successful; so, they openly encourage progeny to ignore vocational education and strive to university one. The similar situation may be observed in many developed and developing countries alike. In other words, the trend exists in the world. However, the decrease in qualified tradespeople is hardly caused by the trend. Firstly, the technological advancement has made the toil of many craftsmen easier and less demanding to having a specific set of skills. To illustrate, in the 1950s and 1960s a truck driver must have had vocational training about repairing and maintaining mechanical parts of his lorry because the vehicles were not reliable and a driver was expected to take care of many problems on his own. By contrast, today’s freight automobiles are extremely reliable and the user of a modern lorry will unlikely face a necessity to repair it. Secondly, the volume of knowledge in many fields keeps growing and complexity of machines used goes up as well. Thus, working on such highly elaborated equipment and their maintenance requires from employees to have a degree. In other words, there are few positions that can be occupied by those who get vocational training. To sum up, although vocational training indeed is not being encouraged and higher education is being promoted. It appears the trend does not lead to the decrease in the number of qualified tradespeople. we rather have a deal with a cause-effect mistake, when the fall in demand for qualified craftsmen results in the rise of importance of getting a tertiary education and to the sunset of vocational training programs.