It is going without saying that it is required for students in tertiary education to engage in a period of unpaid work at companies or organizations as part of their courses. The purpose of this essay is to analyze the positive and negative aspects of this course requirement.
On the one hand, working at companies or organizations without salaries allows people pursuing higher education to broaden their horizon in terms of their faculty and have chances to practise knowledge in lectures. First, it makes a contribution to gaining and enhancing practical knowledge and skills. This is because once students have an opportunities to get their hands dirty, they will obtain some experiences or skills relating to their discipline and their future job. For example, if a student attends a courses on education and undertake a related unpaid work, he will know how to make children understand them deeply or how to be patient in front of his students. Secondly, this kind of work offers students opportunities to practise what they have learned in the course. This means that they just know how to work in theory so through a period of working for a company or organization, they can know how to work effectively and correctly.
On the other hand, such work can bring drawbacks to students with disadvantaged background. In fact, this kind of student has to work and study simultaneously to make ends meet and study. Therefore, if unpaid work is required in a tertiary course, they can not study anymore resulting from the lack of time to gain money for the pursuit of that course.
Given the aforementioned points, this type of course requirement has both merits, including enhanced and increased knowledge andpractical skills as well as chances to put what they learn into practice, and demerit, which can be seen as an obstacle for students with disadvantaged background.