It used to be that a university or college education was a golden ticket to a solid career for life, but that hasn’t been true for some time now. With the rising cost of education, the growing demand for more unskilled professions and the horrors of starting your working life with huge amounts of student debt, people can be forgiven for growing cynical about the real value of education.
Education has always made a difference
To be an effective employee of any kind, you’ll need skills. You’ll need to know how to communicate well, to structure your thoughts properly and function well in the workplace. A good education can help you achieve all of this. No matter how poor the economy, an employee who has more education is more valuable than one with none.
But not all education is the same.
Globally, people are feeling the shift from long term, expensive and highly specialized degrees to general, shorter term and more affordable qualifications. Trade skills are undervalued, yet they represent a practical route to a career that has tangible benefits.
It pays to thoroughly understand a qualification’s value before embarking on a study. Sad to say but a qualification’s price and duration is no indication of how useful it will actually be in the marketplace.
Making education count
Find people who have your intended qualification and speak to them about how it’s worked for them. Is it possible to work without the qualification? How long would you have to devote to earning the qualification and could you gain valuable experience in that time instead? Are there other short courses you could enrol in part time to enhance your employability?
If you understand your qualification as part of your overall career trajectory, you know how it fits in and how exactly it will further your goals. Unfortunately, many private colleges in South Africa offer qualifications at great cost but on a closer look, you find that the students graduating from those colleges seldom earn a working advantage in the marketplace. Do your research.
The value of experience
As a general rule, the importance of education is lower the higher the level of experience. An employer may not care that you only have a matric if you’ve demonstrated for years that you can do the job he wants you to. In some cases, experience trumps education. This is why it’s a good idea to consider furthering your education while gaining experience at the same time – an apprenticeship, internship or other short, hands-on course will not drain you financially or remove you from the workforce for too long.
