[jernfrost]

I think it is too easy to blame students. I dunno how it is in the US but the advice I got in Norway before studying was terrible. When you are 18-19 you don’t know that much about the world. Grownups have to do a lot better job guiding young people.

I studied robotics and AI in Norway assuming if such a study was offered it was because industry needed such skills.

This was 20 years ago before the current AI craze. But there was practically no jobs in this field in Norway. Fortunately I had enough programming to a regular programming job. First by working as a corporate drone at Accenture.

So I was lucky career wise, but that was not due to smart calculated choices. I was wrong about almost everything I did. I chose a study I thought involved building robots when in fact it was mainly about programming them. And almost nobody needed those skills in Norway apart from a company doing recycling and parts of arms industry.

99% of jobs at the time seemed to be some Java server side development, and I had not even learned Java at Uni.

I think the problem is educational institutions want to keep their jobs and students and are thus not entirely honest about how useful the studies they offer really are.

They present a rose tinted reality. Education must to a larger degree respond to the needs of the Labour market and industry.