Quote Originally Posted by Pokemon Trainer Sarah View Post
Mm I'm glad we aren't forced to do maths here. Unless your job will involve it, you don't have to do it at university. There are no general subjects that everyone has to do (that's what high school is for). Although some unis are trying to follow the American model more where you do a more general first year but most people agree that's a bad idea.

I don't get why they push stem either since there are very very few jobs in science and pure maths. There would be more in technology, but even engineering has a shortage of jobs here at the moment. It's very dumb to tell kids to do those subjects.
In the US, you're forced to do maths even in middle school, high school, and most colleges force rather nasty math courses. And just about every standardized test has math and algebra stuff. They definitely try their darnest to get everyone to hate math over here. And in all my years of school, I NEVER once had a single decent math teacher that genuinely knew how to teach the stuff. It was always "oh here's a problem, let me do it, hey I did it, screw you, I'm not going to tell you how in a way real people can understand." I was always wanting for the day that hopefully luck and chance would finally land me with someone decent after so many years. Hell no. Math teachers essentially just administered the tests. YOU were expected to self-teach and get tutors to help you in order to survive.

I agree, the generalized first year of college is useless. I had to take electives in certain areas and I got no benefit out of that. Thankfully in grad school, you take what you're majoring in and that's IT. None of this "oh you have to take a sociology course and a biology course and a that-and-that course well... just because." All it did was pad the number of expensive credits you have to pay for.

STEM fields are only good if there's the promise of a job at the end, which there totally isn't around here. Major in what you want and what you're good at, because the percentage of people that actually get a job in their field of study is quite low and generally experience with a skill, tradecraft, or specialty is more valuable. If you're not good with (or just don't like) STEM fields and the nightmare math package that comes with them, just stay away from them.

And you know, vocational school is not a horrible way to go in life either and they definitely don't emphasize that enough. Some of those jobs pay darn well and if you don't mind working with your hands, it's totally an option.