“What Will Playing Games Ever Do for You?”—How “Useless” Vocational Schools Can Be Useful to Some People

Some vocational schools have a terrible reputation among people online.

Esports schools are probably a prime example.

“What is the point of going to school to play games?” “Only a tiny handful will ever go pro.” “If you are going to spend millions of yen—tens of thousands of dollars—on that, you should just get a job.”

Railway vocational schools attract similar criticism. Going to school because you love trains is no guarantee that a railway company will hire you.

I see.

Apparently, a school is a financial product whose tuition must be recovered through your future salary.

By that logic, any school that does not lead directly to a job is a bad investment.

But perhaps these schools serve a purpose that has nothing to do with their employment rates.

Some Children Can Go to School If It Means Playing Games

Imagine a child who has stopped attending school.

They could not go to a regular high school. They could not fit into the classroom either.

But they can attend an esports vocational school.

They get up in the morning, take the train, and go to school. They talk to people who like the same games, eat lunch together, and return to school the next day.

From the outside, it may look as though they are “just playing games at school.”

But for someone who had barely been able to leave the house, this is a major change.

People are quick to ask:

“What use is that?”

They are leaving the house, meeting people, and going to the same place every day on a regular schedule.

That is useful enough.

The “Freedom” of University Can Be Surprisingly Demanding

You might think, “Then why not go to university?”

It is true that Japan has plenty of institutions derided as “F-rank universities,” which students can enter without strong academic ability.

But the freedom of university also means that you have to take the initiative.

You have to choose your courses, make friends, and find your own way into communities.

For someone who has struggled with relationships, that “freedom” can be surprisingly demanding.

A vocational school provides a class and a timetable. Better still, game enthusiasts gather with other game enthusiasts, while railway enthusiasts gather with other railway enthusiasts.

No one even needs to throw out the opening question, “What are your hobbies?”

That is because almost everyone already likes more or less the same thing.

Why Are Games Held to Such a Strict Standard of Results?

Not everyone who graduates from an esports vocational school can become a professional gamer.

Not everyone who graduates from a railway vocational school can join a railway company.

Therefore, people say, these schools are “pointless.”

But not everyone who studies literature becomes a writer, and most physics majors do not become physicists either.

Yet as soon as games are involved, people suddenly impose a rigorous performance test:

“Can graduates become professionals in that field?”

To be honest, an accounting or culinary vocational school may still look more useful to employers than a gaming school.

But in the end, they are still only vocational schools.

It may depend on the industry, but I suspect that in many cases, employers do not expect a great deal of specialized expertise from vocational school graduates.

At least if I were interviewing candidates for an IT company, I would care more about their character than the name of their vocational school.

Graduating from a programming school might offer the small advantage that I would not need to teach them as much basic knowledge, but I would place far more weight on the impression they made during the interview.

If I genuinely needed someone with deep expertise, I would probably look among university or graduate school graduates.

Even Getting a Part-Time Job Could Be a Huge Success

Now let us return to the case of someone who had stopped attending school or withdrawn from society.

They went to school.

They made friends.

They attended for two years and graduated.

They became neither a professional gamer nor a railway employee.

After graduation, they started a part-time job in a completely unrelated field.

Judged by the numbers alone, this might be labeled a failure to put their specialized education to use at work.

But suppose that without that school, they might have lost all contact with society and remained shut inside their home for years.

In that case, a future in which they earn a wage from a part-time job is a far greater success.

Society tells young people to “go out into the world.”

If they use games or trains as an entry point into society, it asks:

“What is the point of a school like that?”

If they graduate and work at a convenience store, it asks:

“Why did they even go to vocational school?”

They left the house, went to school, made friends, and eventually reached the point where they could work.

If even that counts as “failure,” then society’s definition of “success” is an extraordinarily narrow gate.