In his Feb. 17 letter, "Need for universities seems moot," Dipak Basu seems to put most of the blame on companies for the custom of recruiting third- and fourth-year students and thus causing them to lose valuable study opportunities during their last two years of university. Moreover, Basu writes that "It is my experience that female students tend to study hard while boys don't bother to study because they know they'll get a job no matter what their examination grades are."
Does not the key to solving this problem, then, lie with the universities? In some other countries it simply isn't possible to graduate unless an acceptable level of knowledge has been acquired. If Japanese universities cared about educating students rather than just getting their hands on tuition fees, then the problem would be solved.
If the students don't study seriously, then they don't graduate. If they don't graduate, then they don't get the jobs.
As it is now, companies can be 100 percent sure that the student they recruit in his or her third year will also graduate after four years regardless of performance.
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