Educational institutions have a responsibility to dissuade students from pursuing fields of study in which they are unlikely to succeed Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim In developing and suppor

In recent years, a very common expression, one which started as an advertising catch-phrase, is that, for almost everything 'There's an app for that'. And for guys like me, and there are millions like me (early 20's, engineering graduate, with job experience), the one's who are considering to pursue higher education, there's one app that they would have invariably searched for in their device's app store. For the purposes of this essay, let's call it 'Futury'. What you do with Futury is that once you have installed it, you provide it with all kinds of information regarding your education, job, and aspirations profile. The app also, somehow, has the ability to pull-in data from the hidden sides of your brain, using the likes of ECG, EEG, etc. With this information, what the app does is look for the best match it can find in it's extensive database for the perfect educational opportunity you can pursue. To a guy like me, if I don't blame my laziness for it, the sheer number of opportunities available today, the overwhelming amount of competition, and hence, the accompanying bizarre uncertainities are haunting enough to suggest dropping the 'dream' and getting back to the life I am trying to run away from. Futury would help me by calculating and analyzing all the parameters for me, and returning to me a simple notification with the list of prospects and opportunities I can follow, alongside my respective chances of success in that endeavour.

Let us assume it all works perfectly for once, and somehow my profile is perfect for a junior research assistant position at MIT. I go for it, get the acceptance letter, and start my semester. And then, I have a flu. Or grow home-sick. Or meet a car accident. Or do a horrible mistake in the lab. I fail my tests. And I am thrown out. You may say that that is absurd, impossible, 1 in a million incident. But let's remember, there are already millions like me out there. I could easily be that 1 in a million.

If we look at the provided satetment with the above perspective, we can see how, even with the immense amount of data that educational institutions can or do have, it would be impossible for anyone, including them, to predict the success or failure of a budding aspiration called student.

Collecting and processing huge amount of data retrieved by analyzing the brain and behaviuoral patterns to create an accurate, or at least usable, map of a person's mind and his/her capabilities, is not currently possible. But when someone is going to make that decision for me, and predict my success or failure in an endeavour like seeking education, I would not settle for anything less than that (I do not believe in fortune tellers). What we have today which is closest to such data is the immense amount of knowledge and experience that the educational institutions, it's patrons, and scientists have. So yes, given that nothing like Futury is available yet, 'if' I would allow someone to advise me for success in one field of study than any other, it would be an educational institution. A good and old one at that. Not a government, not my boss, not even my parents. 'If' someone is going to make that decision for me, I think it would be the reponsibility of the educational institutions to not only make that decision for me, but make sure that no one else does it.

But that 'if', is a very big 'if'. Let us get back to Futury, and lets be reasonably practical this time. Futury needs money to run. Ofcourse, that amount of calculation, even in the cloud should be costly. Plus, the poor bloke answering user complaints has to buy coffee sometimes. Now, as the app is targeting the student demographic, it would most probably be free. So, in order to make money, it has to sell ads. And what would be more fruitful than selling ads directly from the universities. The ads can be targeted to students best matching the criteria, probably those who could not get through to MIT, and are willing to pay vast sums to any university that would accept them. The student gets a degree, the university gets it's fees, the bloke gets his coffee. Pretty reasonable right? I would rather call it reasonable doubt in my trust on Futury.

Now, let us replace Futury by an educational institution. Yes, it has all the data it needs to make a decision regarding my future in a field of study. But, how sure can I be that the decision would be a fair one, unbiased by any gusts of winds that run its mills? I mean, the labs have to be maintained, the professors need their own chambers, they have to maintain their accredition, the bathroom is leaking, etc. I may sound like a conspiracy theorist saying that to someone belonging to a free society, therefore I would not even try giving an example of a fascit governemnt trying to breed their own class of nuclear scientists by manipulating the education system. I would rather like you to go back a few hundred years in the history of the most free nation today, when education of women was a taboo, and sitting in a class with negros was a blasphemy. Those beliefs and wisdom are themselves commendable now, but they were the beliefs and wisdom of that time, held to the chest of and propagated and accepted by the normal and the enlightened alike. I cannot afford being that pessimistic about the educational institutions today, but I would have a reasonable doubt. And that's why I would not allow them to make that decision for me.

Just like the doubt I have today of failing in the face of innumerable opportunities that favour the chances of my success, I would have a doubt of succeeding in the face of all the data, wisdom and experience that the educational institutions would use to dissuade me from doing something that they predict I would fail in.