Do you need higher education to... Is higher education necessary in our time: personal development, modern conditions of employment, advice in building a career

Nowadays there are still many people who doubt the usefulness of the knowledge acquired in various educational institutions. Some people think that it is better to go to work immediately after graduating from school or college, not wanting to spend money and time on hard study. Others enter higher education institutions and receive higher qualifications.

Graduating from a university, getting a job in a specialty and receiving a stable high salary is one of the most common life patterns, which testifies in favor of education in prestigious educational institutions. But there are no guarantees at all that this is exactly what will happen. On the contrary, there are many examples where people without special knowledge and a “tower” behind them achieved success.

Advantages of higher education

One of the most important skills that we acquire in the learning process is the ability to obtain information. Yes, people forget formulas, rules and theorems, but the skills to work with the necessary data remain for life. At any time you can find and remember the necessary calculation system or understand the operation of some unfamiliar device.

New knowledge broadens your horizons and allows your thinking to be more flexible and faster. Your own individual opinion is formed on various situations, new opportunities and ideas appear. In addition, it becomes easier to master new information, acquire new skills and rationalize your actions in the course of your work.

If we return to the opinion that a higher education gives advantages when applying for a job, then this is indeed the case. Employers usually prefer to invite more educated and competent people to cooperate. Such employees look more promising, purposeful, attractive and reliable.

When learning something new, a person trains his brain. Indeed, educated and well-read people retain mental clarity longer and have excellent memory. This means, indirectly, that the overall health of the body preserves its tone.

There is another important aspect of the need for training - “utilitarian”. The state needs new qualified workers in various sectors and fields of activity: economics, politics, medicine, industry and many others. There are many professions that in the modern age are impossible for an unskilled and uneducated person to master.

When considering this issue globally, only through the transfer of knowledge from generation to generation is the progress of civilization and the growth of people's living standards possible. And the better this procedure is carried out, the faster the progress is made. “Live and learn” is truly wise and useful advice for every person.

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I recently had a very interesting discussion with a 17-year-old young man, which began with his phrase, “Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of school and became successful.” I saw in him the same stupidity and naivety that was in me, with the only difference that when I was 17, there was no Facebook, and my “uneducated” and successful idol was Bill Gates. I diligently explained to my parents that they were completely wrong, and that success can be achieved without a higher education. They, in turn, hammered into my head that with a diploma from a good university I would never be left without a job and stuff like that. In a discussion with a young man, I became convinced that this issue is still relevant. I hope that this text will help all 17-year-old “me” who cannot understand whether they need to study at a university or not.

“You won’t find a job without a diploma”

A phrase that I often heard from my parents in one interpretation or another. There is some truth in it, since from the point of view of the labor market, a specialist without a “crust” really has enormous difficulties in finding a job, and such an employee costs much less than “certified” ones, even if they are not from “top” universities. However, every time parents tell their children this, they are actually deceiving both themselves and their children. On the part of parents, there is a need for a stable and high-quality standard of living for their child, so they want him to have a diploma, because... this is a certain condition of “stability” in the existing system. But such formulations create an incorrect value system in children: they go for a diploma, and not for knowledge and brains, hence the reluctance to learn - skipping lectures, “freebies, come” and the like. For them, education = diploma, which is fundamentally wrong. The question is not at all that it is difficult to find a job without a diploma, the question is that you don’t need to go to university for a diploma.

“Mark Zuckerberg dropped out and became successful”

Mark Zuckerberg never dropped out of school, just like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, etc. They all abandoned systemic (classical) education in favor of self-education and very hard work. And 17-year-old me didn’t realize this at all. I was in illusions about the ease and coolness of entrepreneurship, about the uselessness of education (namely education, not a diploma), I wanted to go against the system and become a millionaire at the age of 20. But, no matter how trivial it may be, not every person is an entrepreneur. The essence of entrepreneurship is not only to generate cool ideas, but also to be able to implement them, and therefore to be able to take serious risks. Refusal of classical education is one of these risks. The trick of people like Mark Zuckerberg is that their self-education and talent allowed them to quickly get cool results, which took them out of the classical system of determining the value of personnel. They had cases that were orders of magnitude more valuable than diplomas from MIT and other “top” universities. Do you have absolute confidence that you can quickly create such cases? And to be honest?

Classical education or self-education

The most important advantage of classical education is the long-established system of motivation through tests, exams, coursework and other certifications. You find yourself in a system that constantly puts pressure on you and forces you to study. This is why students don’t like studying, but also what makes them study in principle. In the case of self-education, there will be no such system, which is the most important risk of abandoning classical education, which must be understood. I know many examples of people who dropped out of universities and degenerated very quickly. Not because they are stupid or bad people, but because they lacked their own will and interest in self-education. In addition, at the age of 17, you most likely are not able to properly organize your own education in terms of the completeness, relevance and necessity of the knowledge acquired, at a time when classical education, although it gives a lot of unnecessary things, at the same time gives really a lot necessary.

Do I have enough motivation to develop?

For a long time I had no interest in studying, I was always lazy and studied with grades of three or four. After my second year of study at MEPhI, I realized that I was doing the wrong thing and transferred to a commercial, non-prestigious university, where I formally continued my path to obtaining a diploma, but in reality I concentrated on “work.” Moreover, I soon found a “dream job”, where I was paid a very good salary, and where I had to do practically nothing. After a year and a half, I realized that, to put it mildly, I had become stupid. I fell behind the trends, lost my competencies, my brain, not loaded with new tasks, atrophied, I stopped engaging in education, in short, I fell behind and fell behind very much. I measured my worth by the salary I received, not realizing that I was losing my real value day by day. The only thing that brought me out of this whirlpool was that I radically changed the direction of my work and “caught the wave” - I began to get real pleasure from my activities, which is why my laziness disappeared both in terms of work and in terms of education. I have shaken up my brain again, I have gained and continue to gain the necessary competencies and experience. I went to get a second higher education for the sake of education, and not for the sake of a diploma. I began to understand what exactly I wanted to study. I'm already thinking about where I will study next. In other words, you will only get real motivation at the moment when you find something you really want to do. Then you will begin to understand what exactly you need to study in order to achieve greater success in your business. But all this rarely happens at 17 years old, so what you see as your future now may not be what you want in 3-5 years.

Three main assets

What creates real value for you is: developed brains, accumulated knowledge and accumulated experience. Do everything to systematically pump up these assets. It doesn’t matter how you do it: studying at a university, reading books, participating in thematic parties, working for your uncle or for yourself. If you are absolutely sure that you know how to pump up all three assets without a classical education, how to stand on your feet (earn money), and are confident that your own motivation will be enough and that you understand exactly what you are going for and how you are going - go for it. But don’t have your head in the clouds, remember that you are building your life and someone else’s examples or advice should not be decisive in this. Be aware of all the risks and disadvantages of this approach. And yes, if you refuse classical education, still get a formal diploma; universities are a dime a dozen, it’s not difficult to do this without interrupting your other activities. The “crust” will not create additional value for you, but it is still needed. The rules are like this.

Tags: higher education, university, diploma, self-education, motivation

In general, it depends on how you want to live in the future and how important the opinions of others are to you.

There are specialties in which you will definitely not be able to achieve success without a specialized higher education (medicine, law, engineering, etc.). So if you think one of these majors is your calling, it seems clear that this is the education you need.
If you don’t know 1000% exactly what you want to do in the future, it’s better to get some kind of higher education (in this case, I advise you to choose a faculty based on your interests, and not on high pay, because if you are very bored, there is a high probability that you will not complete your studies before receiving your diploma, but you will still most likely be working outside your profession), and here’s why:

With a higher education diploma it is much easier to find a higher paying job than without it. Here's the question: do you need such a highly paid job? It's deeper than it seems. Yes, perhaps it won’t be difficult for you alone to live in a rented room with three other people, eat buckwheat and buy clothes once every five years. What if you want to start a family? You would probably like to raise your children in more favorable conditions (and in principle, quite a lot of money is spent on children). The phrase “money can’t buy happiness” is about how being super rich won’t necessarily make you happy, not about how being poor won’t make it hard.
In principle, prejudices in society are such that people with higher education, who have gone through the realities of studying at a university, are somehow better, smarter, more intelligent than people without it.
While studying at university you can make many new connections, both business and personal, where you are more likely to such you won't get the opportunity.
Even if now it seems to you that you can do without the “goodies” of higher education, there is a high probability that in 10-20 years you will regret your decision not to receive it. I personally know many such people. But the problem is that at the age when you regret it, it is much less likely that you will be able to financially endure your studies (surely, you will be able to work less if you start studying, not to mention the possible costs of studying itself)

Yes, there are people who, without having a higher education, started their own business and became millionaires (or at least well-off). But it is very important to understand that such people - an exception. Where did they have so much knowledge about how to produce a product/service? how to present it in the market? how to attract clients? how to manage a company?
These people either went through a very difficult path, which not everyone can do, or they are damn lucky, and such luck is also extremely rare.

There are areas in which higher education is not necessary to achieve success, and these are mainly creative or sports professions. If you see yourself in this, ask yourself two questions:

Are my abilities in this area sufficient to receive a stable income that meets my needs?
Is the risk of no longer being able to work in this field for any reason (due to injury, for example)?

If your answer to both questions is confidently positive, you can do without higher education. If you are not very sure about any of this, it is better to have a backup plan so as not to be left with nothing.

For many, the standard life situation is when a child, after graduating from school, goes to university, receives a diploma and goes to work. In this case, those who failed begin to feel like losers or people who are a class below students. But it’s worth understanding why higher education is needed and what ways there are to get it.

The coveted diploma

Among Soviet-era people, the stereotype regarding education is very deeply ingrained. Many people think that if their child does not receive a diploma, then his whole life will go downhill. But is it?

This opinion was formed due to the fact that during the existence of the Soviet Union there was an excess of low-profile jobs where workers received low wages. To tell the whole truth, it must be mentioned that people with higher education have also never been pampered with high salaries. But this category already considered itself to be the class of the intelligentsia, which gave it an imaginary superiority.

Today the situation has changed significantly. The question of higher education is completely different. It relies on the benefit of knowledge that can be acquired during training. Mechanized and automated technology is gradually replacing the working class in factories and factories, thereby increasing unemployment and the number of “dying” professions. This state of affairs has significantly raised the status of intellectual workers.

In addition, teaching methods have also changed. Many private universities have appeared, where they try to teach not only the theory, but also the practice of the specialty being studied. For this reason, the cost of education has increased, and the level of prestige of many public educational institutions has decreased.

This trend makes people with little material income wonder whether their children need higher education? Many entrepreneurs have emerged who provide the opportunity to acquire knowledge and skills not through state-approved training programs, but through seminars, webinars and other apprenticeship systems.

Ways to get education

If we talk about standard methods and forms of training, we can highlight the following:

Stationary;

Correspondence;

Remote.

Stationary means daily attendance of lectures and seminars provided for by the curriculum. It seems to be the most effective (from the point of view of obtaining and assimilating knowledge). This form of training can be carried out both on a paid and on a budget basis.

Provides training programs twice a year and is well suited for combining work and study. Of course, the knowledge acquired in one month may not bring significant educational results, but together with practice it can be very useful. Do people who do not work in their specialty need this form? Many professions simply require a diploma.

Distance learning allows you not to appear at the university at all. The student receives consultations, assignments and recommendations by email. By receiving higher education via the Internet, a student saves his time and money. The cost of this form of training is relatively low, but its effectiveness is also not significant.

Each person must decide for himself whether higher education is right for him. In life, the best results come from actions taken with one’s own inner guidance. Likewise, education can be of high quality only when a person himself wants to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills.

Is education necessary today? ? Surprisingly, we hear this phrase more and more often these days. And not only because much attention is now paid to the levels and quality of education.

Modern youth are increasingly thinking about a prosperous life and a dignified old age. And even though many teenagers are not used to making conscious decisions at that age (sometimes they even make serious mistakes), sometimes they may not think about a plan “ahead,” but it is still worth doing. And why?

Why do you need higher education, and is it possible to live without it? Let's try to figure it out.

Is it possible to realize oneself in life without higher education?

The choice of each person is unique, everyone arranges their own life. Now there are rumors that you can be realized in this life without higher education. What are those rumors? It is enough to enter the importance of higher education into the search engine, and we will see that now it is still possible to work without it. But is it? Actually, not really. This rumor appeared a long time ago; you should not blindly believe that without a higher education you will be able to get a decent and well-paid job. Of course there are exceptions. Even without counting those people who got a job thanks to influential or wealthy relatives, there are people with talent and skills at the highest level. But where is the confirmation of this? Nowadays, employers give preference to people who have a higher education diploma.

“If you don’t have a brain, even 5 higher educations won’t help you”

Quite a strange joke, but there is truth in it. Why give up higher education if you have a thirst for knowledge, a desire to find a good job and natural talent? A diploma of higher education will confirm your knowledge and skills in this specialty. Judge for yourself: you need to entrust an important job to one of two workers: one of them knows his job, and the second person is a mystery, it is unknown what he is capable of. Any boss, of course, will choose a more qualified employee, because why should he take risks? The bottom line is that higher education is not necessary, but getting a prestigious job with help is much easier.

Career

It is also important to highlight that at present education is just a formality. You often find people with higher education working for pennies, or vice versa. But an important advantage here is your skill and understanding of your specialty. Do you have these qualities? Then completing college and obtaining a higher education will help you in your career growth! Entrepreneurs always take care of “valuable” workers. It is enough to prove yourself, you will become in demand as a representative of your specialty, and thereby ensure your career growth. The fact is that your boss will help you if he does not want to lose a highly qualified worker with a higher education. But don’t forget about diligence: without it nothing will come of it.

Own business

Many students also dream of their own personal business. This is also an option for making good money on the right conditions and on your own “soil”. But few people realize that most entrepreneurs with their own businesses have higher education. And it is very important here! Building a strong business that will not bankrupt you and will begin to make a profit even in the first couple of years will be difficult for a person who has not graduated from college . IMPORTANT:Here we are talking specifically about a diploma of higher education! If a person does not have talent or desire, then nothing will help him. Higher education here will only simplify the process of starting a business and its development.

Education

Here we will talk about the difference in education, and specifically about higher and secondary – vocational. It is enough to understand that since 2004, secondary education has been increasingly being “diluted” with the school curriculum. In this case, we are being prepared to pass exams, and not to obtain a future profession and skills in the field of interest to us. In all kinds of institutes, by decree of the Ministry of Education, increasing attention is being paid to the ability of future workers to take advantage of the acquired knowledge.

Advantages and disadvantages

Minuses:

Long learning time. Indeed, for some specialties, five years of study is too much. However, you just have to come to terms with this.
Sessions and nerves. Of course, sessions are also present during secondary education, but the requirements for higher education are more stringent, and therefore the sessions are more painful.
Lack of skills. There is nothing to add here: a higher education diploma is of no use if a person cannot work in his profession. In this case, “With a higher education for six thousand rubles” will come out.

Pros:

Advantage when applying for a higher level job. It was written above that the employer will choose a person who understands his profession.
Opportunity for rapid career growth. With the appropriate skills, you can easily become a boss yourself.
The opportunity to easily grow your business. A business can be founded without a diploma, but again, an entrepreneur with a higher education will have an advantage.

Conclusion

Higher education will significantly spoil your nerves and will take a lot of time (depending on the qualification you choose). At times, many people will also have problems understanding their profession. However, it's worth it. A higher education diploma will give you undoubted advantages in the future and will ensure you climb the career ladder. In addition, now is the time: without a higher education, it will be difficult to get even the simplest job, not to mention the legal fields. It turns out that the importance of higher education in the modern world is quite difficult to overestimate.