South African University Application Season: The Ultimate Guide to Choosing What Degree to Study

Image: Rhodes University Student Recruitment

When deciding which career path to follow, prospective university students often approach this decision as if tertiary education is just another obstacle to get through before they reach their goals. In doing so, they forget that their degree and career are directly linked to how they’ll experience their next forty years. This sounds obvious, so why mention it? Well, it’s three months into university application season, and I’ve been coaching many Grade 12 students through their applications. All of them seem to forget that they will one day have to work in the industries linked to whatever degree they have chosen.

Some pick degrees in fields like architecture and civil engineering while struggling through high school subjects like Engineering Graphics Design and Mathematics, and others pick Law while chasing a 50% in English and History. The problem is that you can’t approach university with the same mindset that you approached high school with. Realistically, no one has much freedom of choice during their high school journey; the subject choices are limited and depending on who’s around you, it’s not as if you have a choice to just not finish high school.

Outside of your subject choices, your NSC has very little impact on your working career itself. University, however, is a wildly different ballgame, and from the moment you register for a specific degree, you’re now focused on being able to work in its corresponding career paths. As such, the theory, techniques and methodology that you will be learning throughout the course of your journey are critical, not just for passing modules, but also for being competent in the industry you’ll be going to work in after you graduate.

Even university students themselves don’t study with that in mind, hence the popularity of the CPF (cram, pass, forget) method during test weeks and exam seasons. ‘As long as I pass,’ ‘just let me get this degree, ’ and many other phrases are among the sayings that university students use to comfort themselves in times of difficulty. This can only be described as insane given that they’re actively working towards being contributing members of their industries. I mean, imagine being thousands of meters up in the air, knowing that the pilot flying the aeroplane you’re in just barely passed his licensing exams because ‘cram, pass and forget.’ He’s got the license, yes, but is he really qualified to fly this thing?

This was the dilemma I faced last January. I had just received an offer to study an LLB, and I registered immediately after receiving the offer because, hello? It was an LLB darling! Later that evening, though, a sense of dread filled my stomach while looking at the modules on my proof of registration. Basic Statistics, Family Law, Legal Writing Skills, Law of Persons, and others. While trying to convince myself that I made the right choice, I told myself that the next four years didn’t matter, I would just endure this by pushing through it.

Sounds familiar, right?

I acted as if those modules were just for character development, like after I got the qualification, they would become obsolete. Now I know it’s nearly impossible to like every single aspect of your job; it’s to be expected, but for the next 30-40 years, you’ll be spending a third of your life working. If you decide to go corporate, that will look like waking up every day, Monday to Friday, spending your mornings and afternoons on that job. Now picture yourself doing the very same calculations or writing the same type of reports that made getting your degree miserable because again, that’s what you’re qualified in, right?

Accepting the notion that suffering is synonymous with employment is like choosing to stay imprisoned in a prison cell despite not being convicted of any crime. It doesn’t serve you to look at your tertiary education as if it’s some prison sentence you must serve to be free, it’s actually you finally getting to build the foundation toward a fulfilling career.