🚀 The Great University Blame Game
"Why did my university teach me C when the industry wants Next.js and DevOps?! 😡"
Sound familiar? If you’re a CSE student in Bangladesh (or anywhere, really), you've probably heard (or shouted) this complaint. You’re not alone! Many students believe:
❌ "Universities don’t teach trendy skills!"
❌ "They don’t make us job-ready!"
❌ "Professors just come, mumble something, and leave!"
At first glance, this sounds reasonable. In a fast-moving industry, shouldn’t universities prepare students for immediate employment?
But pause for a second and ask yourself:
👉 Do you actually know what a university is meant to do?
Let's dive deep and uncover the truth about universities, why they don’t teach trendy tech, and why self-learning is the ultimate superpower for success. Buckle up, because by the end of this, you might just stop blaming your university and start blaming yourself (in a good way). 🚀🔥
1️⃣ What Is a University, Really? (Hint: Not a Job Training Center)
🎓 The Definition You Never Bothered to Check
Many students expect universities to function like training institutes or coding bootcamps, focusing on industry-ready skills. However, these demands break the very definition of what a university is meant to be.
📢 If your main goal is just to get a job quickly, why didn’t you join a training institute instead? Institutions like Creative IT, Interactive Cares, or BASIS specialize in job-focused training.
Universities, on the other hand, exist to develop critical thinking, research abilities, and long-term adaptability. Their role is to teach you the core principles, so you can innovate and create new technologies—not just use existing ones.
A university (from Latin universitas, meaning "a whole") is an institution of higher education and research that grants academic degrees across various disciplines. The term originates from universitas magistrorum et scholarium, which means "a community of teachers and scholars."
💡 Key takeaway: A university is not a job-training factory. It is a place designed to nurture scholars, researchers, and innovators.
📜 A Little History Lesson (That You Probably Skipped in Class)
- University of Bologna (1088): Focused on law and philosophy, not job skills.
- Oxford University (1096): Emphasized debate, logic, and literature, not trendy programming.
- Nalanda University (427 AD): Was a hub of scientific and mathematical research, not coding bootcamps.
Universities were never designed to produce "job-ready" graduates; they were built to advance human knowledge and create problem-solvers.
👉 Expecting your university to turn you into a React developer is like expecting a philosophy class to teach you TikTok marketing. Wrong place, wrong expectations.
2️⃣ Why Universities Don’t Teach Trendy Skills (And Shouldn’t!)
Now that we know universities aren’t job factories, let’s address the big question: Why don’t they teach Next.js, DevOps, or Kubernetes?
📌 Trendy Skills Come and Go, Fundamentals Last Forever
Let’s look at the web development timeline:
- 2005: PHP and jQuery ruled. Today? Dead.
- 2015: AngularJS was "the future." Today? Obsolete.
- 2025+: Something new will replace React and Next.js.
🔍 But what remains the same?
- Data structures & algorithms
- Operating systems
- Networking fundamentals
- Programming paradigms (OOP, functional, procedural)
💡 Universities teach the timeless so you can adapt to the temporary.
🔍 Where Do These "Trendy" Technologies Even Come From?
🛠️ Next.js → built on Node.js
🛠️ Node.js → built on JavaScript
🛠️ JavaScript → runs on the V8 engine
🛠️ V8 engine → powered by C++
🛠️ C++ → an extension of C
See the cycle? Everything leads back to fundamentals. That’s why universities teach C, not Next.js. Without C, there would be no JavaScript, no Node.js, and no Next.js. Trendy tech is just layers built on the core knowledge you refuse to appreciate.
👉 Your university isn’t failing you. You’re failing to see the bigger picture.
3️⃣ The Harsh Reality: If You Can’t Self-Learn, University Isn’t for You
📢 "Professors don’t teach properly! They just come and go!"
Ever noticed that your professors are called "instructors" and not "teachers"? That’s because university is not school. Professors guide you, but you’re supposed to self-learn.
🔎 In school, teachers spoon-feed knowledge. In university, you’re expected to find answers yourself.
💡 Reality check:
📌 If you blame your university for not making you job-ready, can you:
✅ Solve a DSA problem without Googling?
✅ Explain memory allocation without ChatGPT?
✅ Debug a segmentation fault without Stack Overflow?
If not, the problem isn’t your university—it’s your lack of self-learning.
4️⃣ The Impossible Demand: "Teach Everything!"
Even if universities wanted to teach job-ready skills, it would be impossible:
❌ CSE has thousands of job sectors—web dev, AI, cybersecurity, embedded systems, blockchain, etc. Should universities teach all of them?
❌ Each student has different career goals. Should universities create custom courses for every student?
❌ Technology changes too fast. By the time universities update their syllabus, the trend will have changed.
👉 Universities focus on fundamentals so that you can later specialize on your own. If universities changed their purpose from their original definition and started acting like job-training centers, there would be no innovation at all. The world’s greatest advancements—like the internet, AI, and modern programming languages—came from researchers, not bootcamps. If universities stopped focusing on research and fundamental knowledge, there would be no new technologies, only consumers using existing ones.
5️⃣ Why Companies Value Fundamentals Over Trendy Tech
📌 Google, Microsoft, and Amazon don’t care if you know Next.js. They hire based on problem-solving skills and adaptability.
✅ A developer who only knows Next.js will struggle when it becomes obsolete.
✅ A developer with strong fundamentals can learn any technology quickly.
✅ Top companies test Data Structures & Algorithms (DSA), not trendy frameworks.
💡 Your fundamentals determine your long-term success—not trendy skills.
🎯 Conclusion: Stop Blaming Universities, Start Taking Responsibility
🚀 Universities are not meant to make you "job-ready." They are meant to prepare you for a lifetime of learning, research, and innovation.
📌 If you can’t self-learn, university is not for you. Join a training institute instead.
📌 If you expect universities to teach trendy tech, you are thinking like a consumer, not a creator.
📌 If universities only focused on job-ready skills, there would be no innovation in the world.
👉 The real question isn’t "Why isn’t my university teaching me React?" but "Why haven’t I taken responsibility for my own learning?"
💡 Final Mic-Drop Moment:
"A university is not there to train you for a job. It is there to prepare you for a lifetime of learning, research, and innovation." 🚀
🔥 If this made you rethink your university experience, share it with your batchmates! 😎💡
Photo by Md. Nazmul Islam Nayeem on Unsplash
Top comments (0)