Rich People With No College Degree – Forbes List
Freedom of choice is a good thing and in same time is very difficult for some people. Billions of high-school seniors thinking about what they want to do after graduation. Everybody wants to be successful with their life: to have a job that they like and a good salary. There is a choice: spend money and time to get a college education or not waste time and money and start a career. Many high school students think, Should I get a college degree?, and what can be gained from it. “After all, college education is not something that comes cheap and it does take a few years before an individual can start earning his/her own income. But this is where thinking about the future career education becomes important. One should know that a college degree opens up many newer doors of employment in the future, even though it takes a bit longer to get there. The purpose of college education is therefore, to live a better life.”(http://www.buzzle.com/articles/college-education-benefits-of-college-education.html)
But let’s compare people with college degree and non-degree holders. My purpose is to find out what’s the difference between two.
Income is first difference between two. People who have college education are more knowledgeable in their field. This makes them higher earning professionals in comparison to the non-degree holders. Depends on graduated college and GPA salary may vary. People without college degree usually have lower income. They are less knowledgeable in the job compared to person with a college degree.
Another difference between people with college education and non-degree holders is knowledge. “Education (as a social institution) teach young people what it is mean to be a member of the society and how to survive in it.”(Sociology, David M. Newman) People with college degree better equipped.They are competent in many aspects of their job. College prepares a person to meet competition head on. People without degree learn a lot of things during the work. Fulfilling work tasks help person to learn nuances of his job, which made him knowledge too, but not as much as person with college diploma. Also, person with no degree could study at home, but it is a small chance that he will be better equipped than person with a college degree. Which is meant that individual without degree could not compete with real professionals on a job market. Progress in career is one more difference between two. College degree holders are much more likely to get promotions and makes strides in their chosen field of work in comparison to the non-degree holders. People without college degree could get a promotion too, but less on a leadership position. They are less knowledgeable, which means that they can’t lead better than people with college education.
In my opinion, Education as a social institution is important. College is the place, where you learn a lot of new things. Students could take different classes and see what they like more. There are a lot of examples when students changed their majors during the semesters. Occasionally, students chose majors, which they never thought about. Thus, college helps students better understand themselves, open new verges of their personalities. Also, not all the people very talented and could built their career without college degree. And college diploma is a first step to their future. Students believe if they could graduate from college than they could build a perfect career. They feel themselves knowledgeable, well prepared and confident for the future job. That is meant that they could compete on labor-market, therefore be effective workers. Also, college diploma gave status to the person not only in “employer’s eyes”, but also in “eyes of” person’s relatives and friends.
It is really complicated question and depends on the different individuals’ personalities, talents and which filed they are going to consume. However, I think if you wanted to be a self-employee and risk taker, you may want to start your career ASAP like Bill Gates. He used his most time to study and developed the program and then built up the Microsoft empires, which affects the world’s PC system till now. If he finished his study, he might miss the best chance to succeed.
Some jobs do require you a degree, such as engineer, lawyer and accounting and some famous companies use that as a barrier to block some special genius to work for them. In addition, if you wanted to have a stable job and got promotion steps by steps, a degree, especially in a famous college degree would work out. You may say how come I use the different words: Career and Job? In my opinion, those are totally different things, which a career may include full passions and interests but a job is just a place that you save money to live by. And I think owning a career may be easier to get rich but a degree only can polish your resume at beginning of your job. Unfortunately, that is. During the recession, more and more people force to gain higher degree in order to improve the competitive abilities. Which degree would be the ending? On the other hand, how many people, as self-employee can succeed like Bill Gates? It is all about the opportunity cost. How to balance that, it is really a question.
I agree with you on the point education is important as social institution. From my personal point of view, college means more than what many people think it does. Most of us decide to go to college to get a degree in specific field becuase we believe it will give us better opportunites in the job market. This is true, we need a degree to be someone in the soon futre, but what it think the college is more than just offering degrees. We learn so many priceless things in the college from building responsibility to practical knowledge. Everyday in campus, we learn how to interact with others socially and we experience society before we go into the real world. College education helps us get better understanding of social and economic structure of our society and provides the way to convert our dreams into reality. College is a matter of getting a dgrees, I agree, but it’s more about quality of our lives. In any aspect, I think college education is necessary for all of us.
But the problem is college tuitions are still hiking and it seems like it will never stop. This is so tragic that many students are put on huge amount of debt even before they enter the real world and there’s no guarantee that we will find a job right away after graduation. This is so ironic that unemployment rate and college tuition are going up together. What if you’re not affordable to pay your tuition so you take a student loan but not be able to repay because you can’t get a job? This is so unfair.