I had an interesting conversation the other day with Sjoerd, my flatmate. The upcoming semester I must do an internship at a company. I wont bore you with details but the point is that I am applying to all sorts of places. You send 20 emails and get one response saying they dont have time for this now, but they will come back to you. Yeeah.. yeah yeah.. sure you will... aham. Anyway, its interesting how the generation worked before us, it did not matter what you studied, if you had a university degree, it was enough proof that you are smart enough to learn the job, and they got you in. Todays most businessman (and women, just for the feminist readers.. though we know the truth about ratios :) :) ) so todays most businessman are lawyers, engineers, gardeners and in a rare case economists or some business related studies.

Now we, as their children were raised in that manner... it does not really matter what you study, just do it, if its hard enough, you will find your place later, and get familiar with the job fast. That was exactly what we wanted to hear when at the age of 17 somebody asked us: so what do you want to work when you grow up, pal? Oh and we wanted to become firefighters and policemen (firefighterins and policewomen), but appearantly there is no university for that. Therefore we are slowly becoming economists, marketing managers, lawyers, engineers and such, in a world which seem to get more and more specialized, with every passing day, companies want students with a relevant field of study and working experience. A bit of a problem there... after all it seems that anyone can become a businessman, but from business studies you can only become a.. ohm.. well.. lots of stuff... like a businessman. Dead end, is the expression I believe.

On the other hand especially in business companies tend to train their own experts. If you go to GE, or P&G, they tell you to forget everything you learned before and "this is how we do it". Job interviewing methods moved away from professional questions, they are merely testing how smart you are and if they can motivate you, becuase for obvious reasons these two qualities define the perfect employee. If we look at it from that standpoint than the point of our studies were only to open our eyes. But here comes the scary part. As companies get better an better at analyzing these properties, what the student does himself becomes irrelevant. Training is part of the development process but it diminishes in relevance significantly. The problem will come when corporations start identifying ideal employees based on their DNS. At that point the world is going to change, and the era of predetermination will begin (once again, if I might add). So much for the holy ideas of hard working and dedication bringing success.