GIGO

Graduation Musings

There's a certain surrealism in being part of a graduation procession of medievally attired academics -- complete with gowns, hoods, mortarboards, Tudor caps and all -- wending your way towards a brightly lit stage where a welcoming karanga is being sung for you.

I was the guest speaker for Waikato's Schools of Science and Technology and Computing and Mathematical Sciences. It's rather a daunting thing, standing in front of hundreds of fresh graduates, trying to appear knowledgeable and wise -- particularly since it's less than ten years since my own graduation.

The outlook then wasn't good for science graduates. Many I knew ended up in teaching, public relations, law, the unemployment queue. Others embarked on the post-doctoral trail overseas.

I think that the graduates I saw at Waikato will have a better time of it, if only because they are emerging at a time when scientists world-wide are retiring rapidly. I hope that the predicted shortage of scientifically and technologically trained people will mean that they will have better opportunities, better pay and better status than their predecessors.

They have missed out in other ways, however. When I was at university -- less than a decade ago -- the year's fees came to the exorbitant sum of $52. That meant it was no major hardship to drop courses, change majors, try out subjects for interest's sake. You didn't have to mortgage your life in order to get a PhD, let alone an undergraduate qualification.

These days, much of the joy of learning seems to have gone from university life. There's precious little time -- or money -- for absorbing anything outside immediate course goals, which is a shame because university should provide a place where all sorts of knowledge can be encountered and explored.

Force students into narrow, specialised areas of study, and you run the risk of producing a cardboard cut-out of a person, one who does not have the ability or knowledge of how to tackle the many generalised, broad issues which we encounter every day.

Vicki Hyde is the editor of New Zealand Science Monthly.