I respect your opinions but I still disagree with you on so many levels.

I have not seen ONE SINGLE tenured professor with only a basic degree in a UK prestigious university, such as LSE, oxbridge or KCL. Those who have basic degrees can only teach as lecturers or teaching assistants. I wonder where you get this from. Please don’t throw false information into this discussion and pass it off as cold hard truth, when it clearly isn’t.

Please also don’t put interpetations or words into my mouth. I view entrepreneurship as entrepreneurship is, that is, the practice of starting a new organization or business. It seems to me that your definition, and intepretation, of the term is the “anomalous” and idiosyncratic one. You view it as “all about overcoming constrains”, which isnt the correct literal definition but instead your own idiosyncratic definition, which no one need abide by. All I’m saying is that while there are definitely successful entrepreneurs locally, these people aren’t many. For every one successful entrepreneur i.e sim wong hoo, there are hundreds of others who fail.

Lastly, I strongly disagree with your over emphasis on networking. Networking can be done anywhere, and more so in firms, seminars, exchange trips, in your job. You don’t go to university for networking for goodness sake. You network by undergoing internships, industrial attachments and temporary placements, and these are all jobs OUTSIDE of the ivory tower. You go to university for the knowledge, for the internship opportunities, for the degree to open up career doors.

Of course, having a degree from prestigious university wouldnt guarantee success. It all boils down to individual, but seriously speaking, if a student can make it into harvard, and graduate, do you think there’s a high chance he will fall in life? I don’ think so. For the intelligence and tenacity that brought him through the tough admissions process and tough learning experience in school will serve him for the rest of his life, career or otherwise.

another reason is the thought of consulting strangers may give shudders to one. People would rather put their trust in others they know, even though the others may not have a clue about anything.

lastly, there is always a doubt about whether do the counsellors know what they are ‘selling’? Their primary role is to counsel, to give advice. But have they went through the job(s) before? Even then, those who jumped ship from their old jobs to be career guidance counsellor or plain counsellor maybe baised for or against their old job. That still leads to the same situation again.

I agree that career guidance is a must, but cannot be specifically placed at a single level of education. In primary school, I just want to play; in lower sec I thought of accountancy, before thinking of IT in upper sec; in JC, I first thought of focusing math alone before heading back to accountancy. But where I am now? Waiting to attend Information Systems Management in SMU while doing NS, due to inadequecies in my academic results. But is it a course I like or even want to attend? May not be. The wishy-washy during my formation period is due to peer influence and external stimulus from new environments. The career guidance lessons I had as a student don’t help much as most are conducted by teachers, who obviously using stock propoganda. “So what you want to be? A laywer, an accountant…?” No mention of the ‘non-performing’ careers. It would be interesting to hear teachers going, “Be an artist, singer, musician, blogger.” Most of my classmates drifted off to their lala land before 5 minutes were up.

I prefer aesthetics, but I hate to say that I can’t develop a career path in there becuase whatever I learnt is half-past 6. To qoute a fellow NS mate, “We have put the points into the wrong skills.” (Think in the RPG way). Life so far is not like a RPG game where we can choose the stats of the character we control. Where the mouse clicks is where our peers, our parents says so (or even the gvt).

The best form of career guidance, in my opinion, is actual exposure to the work of the intended profession during holidays. Not only the students can gain insights into the jobs, also knowledge and experiences which school cannot provide.

the problem with this occupations is that the pay is too low to survive in Singapore

I heard such thing as environment office in the US whereby these people are respected for cleaning-up the neighborhood why not in Singapore?

I have to say that I had expected you would respond the way you did.

On the point about entrepreneurship, I see you have seen view that trait in a very narrow term — i.e. entrepreneurship as something special. You should see entrepreneurship is nothing special. In its raw form, it is all about overcoming constrains. Life at all level is about overcoming constrains, so whether we like it or not we have to be entrepreneur even in something as mundane as developing a career.

When I pointed out Mr Brown as a case in point, what I am pointing out is how he took the initiative to overcome the constraints so he can eventually do what he does now. I don’t mean everyone can do exactly what Mr Brown did.

Take your case as an example. You said you like economics but should that stop you from pursing that love. Why not start a blog and begin commenting about economic issues. Focus on Singapore’s. Who knows in time to come you views could be acceptable. This is an example of entrepreneurship — over coming your constraints in order to achieve your goal.

On the point about getting a degree from prestigious university, let me say that I live and work in the UK or London specifically. I have to say that people in the UK are really not that asked about the kind of degrees you got. The only exception is when you do get jobs specifically require it such as researchers/professors. Even so, in some universities, even prestigious ones, you have Professors that only have basic degree no postgraduate. That is because, these people have earned their respect from other route, namely, through the making their work known and most importantly networking.

And the fact that you come from a prestigious university ALONE don’t get you anywhere unless you are prepared to work for it and leverage on the network that you have developed.

Also opportunities don’t come to you. Neither does it come with your degree. You have to seek it out and most importantly if presented to you to seize it. I know of a few people who graduated from prestigious university expects the world to come knocking at their door step but in the end did not happen.

It’s absolutely true. In UK, the university reputation and honours class matter more than your degree type. For example, my senior read International Relations at LSE and got a job offer as a private banker. And there’s this girl who read natural science at cambridge and is now an analyst at Goldman.

Singapore, not possible. If you are an accountant by training, you stand a much greater chance even though your competitors might have better grades. It’s all about degree relevance.

@ Tan Ah Kow

I agree with most of what you have said. Singapore does have its fair share of entrepreneurs, but the thing is these are exemplary cases that are few and far between. And I dont quite agree with what you have said about people going to prestigious university not for the value of the degree. Networking need not be done in university only, but obviously going to uni purely for networking purposes is pretty shallow. The value of a degree from Ivy League opens up immense opportunities and this is why people go to thess unis, aside from other reasons such as wanting to be a researcher/professor.