Would you rather hire a recent graduate with a Food Science degree or a high school graduate with 4 years experience as QA in a production facility? Based on personal experience, I know who I would choose...
Did anyone's undergraduate Food Science education have any classes dedicated to Food Safety and Quality?
My alma mater's course offerings are so heavily skewed towards product development and research. It was pushed so much I felt like a failure when my first job out of school was a QA tech and all my friends went into candy development x)
Most of the useful knowledge I have came from post-grad paid training and a couple very good managers who took the time to teach. But if I didn't have that, I wouldn't have got as far in my career as I am now. I almost think HACCP certification should be mandatory to graduate. And root cause analysis....and internal auditing....and regulations....