Transferable skills?
To pick up a point arising several times elsewhere, I note the difference between training and education. These need not be wholly exclusive but the latter ought be directed towards understanding principles underlying tools enabling completion of practical tasks.
For instance, academic disciplines (and associated vocational courses) with considerable reliance on using the optical microscope would be remiss if no basic grounding in optical principles, along with their realisation in practice, is provided. Not detailed account of optical theory but sufficient outline to enable efficient use of the instrument (e.g. Kohler illumination) and to recognise optical artefact (e.g. diffraction effects consequent upon excessive reduction of working aperture).
For that purpose it matters not in the least whether the instrument was manufactured by Leica, Zeiss, or Olympus. Employers of people called upon to use optical microscopes would anticipate previous education/training in deploying the instrument but not demand experience in products from a particular maker; it should take little time to acquaint a new employee with instruments that happen to be at hand.
Similarly, office software, design software, and image manipulation software, each entail understanding some fundamental principles before effective and reliable use is attainable. Employers demanding job applicants be signed up members of, say, the Microsoft and Adobe clans are short sighted. Thereby, they may be excluding consideration of superior candidates. After all, expectation is of graduates being quite bright, flexible of thought, generally adaptable, and able rapidly to become acquainted with variants of tools with which they are familiar; properly planned induction of newcomers takes care of this.
Whilst most people would regard Microsoft products (apart from Windows) and Adobe software fit for purpose they are not exclusively so. Clever marketing has made these tools appear essential, this reinforced by near ubiquitous use in education. Instead of allowing themselves to be increasingly tied into particular software vendors, under false impression of being offered a 'good deal', public educational institutions should support a range of open source free software and enable students to grasp that it's a matter of 'horses for courses' regarding specific tasks.
Nothing prevents Microsoft, Adobe, Wolfram, SPSS, etc. providing free of charge copies of their closed source proprietary software to compete alongside freely provided software from other sources; competition would be in terms of functionality, ease of use, adaptability for specified non-mainstream tasks: not on price per se.
Staff and students would discover that price and worthiness for use correlate weakly. Moreover, diversity of tools within an organisation rather than conformity to, say, a particular office suite, encourages convergence of data transfer (e.g. document) protocols.
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