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Trade guilds tell students: be practical

Published: 3 Jan 13 07:34 CET | Print version
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/money/20130103-47101.html

German students sick of over-filled lecture halls and the scramble to find an affordable place to live in university towns should consider switching to the practical side of life - they are being targeted by trade organisations.

Trade guilds are specifically appealing to students or those considering that path, saying that a career in a trade can be much more straightforward than the academic alternative.

Trade guild association president Otto Kentzler told Wednesday's Saarbrücker Zeitung newspaper that the guilds were targeting students who were frustrated with academia.

He said what he called a trend of making everything academic was fatal, and suggested that around a third of students at the large universities failed to finish their degrees. Those studying science were subjected to frequent intermediate exams which filtered out the weaker candidates, he said.

Should they instead opt for a trade, those same people would get "clear orientation - to the top", he said.

But he also criticised the standard of education which schools were giving young people, saying that many trainees struggled when they first joined a firm. "Many trade masters take matters into their own hands and give their trainees extra tuition," said Kentzler.

DAPD/The Local/hc

What do you think? Leave your comment below.


Your comments about this article:

11:04 January 3, 2013 by Zubair Khan
Why not to expand the capacity in study rooms and residential hostels. Alternate suggested is no match to higher education.
13:09 January 3, 2013 by blackboot11
Yes higher education is a great thing make no mistake there. But as the curent trends are here, focusing on a money making business and recruiting as many students as possible without giving them the quality learning experience that they have in the past, a trade is seeming like a very viable option.
15:55 January 3, 2013 by catjones
Yeah, but can she tune a fish?
20:23 January 3, 2013 by smart2012
Guys, study, do not make this mistake, maybe good short term but for sure bad long term. Education is the most powerful thing u can have. Remember, monarchs, oligarchs and dictators kept their people uneducated to control them better...
04:28 January 4, 2013 by Berlin fuer alles
@smart2012

Don't want that in Germany now do we. Who would read BILD then? How could the masses be misleaded against other EU partners when it suits certain German banking and political interests?
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