Already know what profession you like? Then, go seek it out directly.
In Germany, around 60% of young people train as apprentices—in fields all over, from banking to IT to manufacturing. In the US, that number is below 5%, and mainly only has to do with construction jobs. That’s because the idea of “dual training,” or splitting yourself between on-the-job time at a company and classroom time at a vocational school, is much more popular in Europe than it is in America.
But that doesn’t mean young Americans can’t apply the same idea. If you’re interested in welding, metal work, masonry, forestry, landscaping, or many other hands-on fields, it won’t be difficult to find apprenticeships or internships that can lead directly to a full-time job. For industries like art, journalism, or music, things will prove a little trickier; still, the majority of jobs in these industries only “prefer” a bachelor’s degree, and employers focus much more on your talents and experiences than your official credentials. (If you want to be a doctor, hopefully you know that’s a far different story.)
Go to a school that’s not a school
If the job you want absolutely mandates some sort of credential, remember that the pricey four-year US university is not the be-all, end-all.
Community-college degrees are affordable, flexible—they often allow students to complete portions of the semester online or at their own pace—but you don’t even have to invest in that if you don’t want to.
Consider innovative new education ventures such as the Minerva School, an accredited university that strips away most of the overhead of higher education (such as professor tenure, student dorms, or even a physical campus) and offers a pared-down, cost-friendly experience of learning in its purest form. Minerva’s acceptance rate is 1.9%, lower than that of Harvard, Yale, or Oxford, which should give a hint as to how coveted its experience is amongst both students and employers. Then there’s the Holberton School (paywall), a two-year tech program in San Francisco that turns complete novices into engineering experts.
“We have some students who have found jobs at NASA and Google,” Holberton’s co-founder Julien Barbier tells Quartz. “These are proof points of the result—of what you can achieve by going through this type of education.”
Companies, particularly those in Silicon Valley, are progressively looking away from transcripts and extracurriculars. Google, in particular, truly couldn’t care less about what school you attended; it only wants to know if you can a) solve problems, b) lead, and c) offer the company something different. IBM says that about 10-15% of its new hires don’t have a college degree. And in Google’s view, the experience of going to college can sometimes even detract from a candidate’s qualifications—serving as only an “extended adolescence.“
Look into bootcamps and short programs
Coding bootcamps have exploded in popularity over the past few years, to the point where there’s even a $3,000 prep program to train people to apply for coding bootcamps.
If you’re interested in a computer science career, such programs are one of your best shots at getting there fast. With so much interest in the market, options abound for schools with different business models, teaching styles, and niche focuses. For maximum benefit, there are programs like 42, a coding school backed by a French billionaire that plunges students into a four-week “piscine” (literally, a pool) of immersive, intensive training, inviting them to spend nearly a whole month coding, day and night.
Just make sure to do your research—as not every bootcamp is capable of delivering what it promises, and some of them are falsely riding the wave of the success of others before them.
Take advantage of digital wonderland
The most obvious but underrated answer to expensive college educations is the internet. Online learning, while still scoffed at by many on the teaching end, is becoming much more popular amongst students as digital education platforms improve. Coursera, the world’s leading online learning platform, offers thousands of non-degree programs that teach essential skills.
One of them is “Learning How to Learn,” offered by the University of California-San Diego, which teaches the basics of picking up information: something that most colleges don’t ever bother going over.
“For a lot of people, face it, if you’re in class—somebody’s walking in and out, somebody else is leaning in front of you, you miss things and you can’t stop the instructor continuously to ask them to go back and repeat something. You’re wasting time,” Barb Oakley, the professor teaching the course, tells Quartz. Oakley adds that she struggled in college herself, often losing focus on instructors’ lecture materials after the first 10 minutes. Via her online course and others like it, students can rewind, absorb information at their own pace, and pick up skills they might otherwise never have even considered in a traditional college lecture setting.
Coursera is not alone: edX, Udacity, Khan Academy, UoPeople also provide free online courses, many of which are uploaded by professors at Harvard and other top schools. Putting aside the matter of the official diploma, you can receive a near-complete Ivy League education these days without ever setting foot on a campus—or paying a cent.
Oh no, education cannot be over rated. This is why.
A close look at the meaning of education beds the essential need of it. Education, a relevant tool for a worthwhile life. In line with the asked question, one is forced to re-ask, what is education? And how can it be over-rated? So, what is education?
Education as a phenomenon has enjoyed different definitions and consequently, one definition cannot be said to be Superior. However, world wide acceptable definitions are commonly identified with unified trend. Let us consider these,
"Education is the process of acquiring the body of knowledge and skills that people are expected to have in your society. A good education develops a critical thought process in addition to learning accepted facts. It also encourages intellectual curiosity, which will lead to lifelong learning." https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-mean-by-education-and goodeducation. According Oyekan (2000), education is the aggregate of learning processes. Ngada Audu James says, "Education is the only instrument that when wisely and effectively utilized can develop the entire society. It is expected to prepare the medical doctor for his profession, the engineer, architect, teacher, politician and all other professional towards the full development of their society. Education is the single largest industry that is expected to attract the lion's share of a nation's budget if meaningful development is to take place as it affects all spheres of life of the totality of any society."
From the foregoing, education is simply the clothes one must wear to avoid being called mad or immoral. It is a basic necessity for basic human existence.
Therefore can we overemphasize the importance of education? Oh no! No education, no life.
Meanwhile, people often confuse school with getting education. Succinct difference is ostensibly created. Education could be formal, non-formal or semi-formal.
While formal education is classroom-based carried out by trained teachers. Or we say, formal education is a planned learning content that is carried out in a structure by trained personnel. On the other hand, non-formal education doesn't have a designed learning content and it doesn't take place in classroom. Or we simply put, Organised and systematic learning activity conducted outside the formal education system.
Non-formal education and training is understood as education and training leading to qualifications which are not directly recognised as such by relevant national education authorities (or equivalent authorities) or not leading to any qualifications at all (although recognition and validation of learning outcomes could then be used and indirectly lead to formal qualifications). This concept is therefore distinguished from formal education and training, which: (a) typically takes place in (or, in the case of formal apprenticeships, dually involve) the system of schools, colleges and universities and other formal education institutions; (b) normally, although not necessarily, constitutes a continuous ladder of education for children and young people; (c) is directly relevant for the determination of the highest level of formal education attained. It is also distinguished from random and informal learning which are not intentional and/or not institutionalised. (https://unevoc.unesco.org/go.php?q=TVETipedia+Glossary+A-Z&id=185)
From the disparity above, can one establish that either of the two major forms of education can be overemphasized? In both ends, education commands the living of a person.
Actually, if one is not educated (formal and/or informal), one is simply 'dead'. However, schooling can be over rated in the sense that one needs more than going to school to become 'useful' and at times the best in one can be discovered outside school. Just like the footballers, sweemers and so on. They don't teach these and some other talented skills in school but can be grabbed outside school yet, the ones that don't attend school but maximize their innate potentials are individuals that outstanding and can compete with their counterparts that have attended school.
Study for a job, not a degree
Already know what profession you like? Then, go seek it out directly.
In Germany, around 60% of young people train as apprentices—in fields all over, from banking to IT to manufacturing. In the US, that number is below 5%, and mainly only has to do with construction jobs. That’s because the idea of “dual training,” or splitting yourself between on-the-job time at a company and classroom time at a vocational school, is much more popular in Europe than it is in America.
But that doesn’t mean young Americans can’t apply the same idea. If you’re interested in welding, metal work, masonry, forestry, landscaping, or many other hands-on fields, it won’t be difficult to find apprenticeships or internships that can lead directly to a full-time job. For industries like art, journalism, or music, things will prove a little trickier; still, the majority of jobs in these industries only “prefer” a bachelor’s degree, and employers focus much more on your talents and experiences than your official credentials. (If you want to be a doctor, hopefully you know that’s a far different story.)
Go to a school that’s not a school
If the job you want absolutely mandates some sort of credential, remember that the pricey four-year US university is not the be-all, end-all.
Community-college degrees are affordable, flexible—they often allow students to complete portions of the semester online or at their own pace—but you don’t even have to invest in that if you don’t want to.
Consider innovative new education ventures such as the Minerva School, an accredited university that strips away most of the overhead of higher education (such as professor tenure, student dorms, or even a physical campus) and offers a pared-down, cost-friendly experience of learning in its purest form. Minerva’s acceptance rate is 1.9%, lower than that of Harvard, Yale, or Oxford, which should give a hint as to how coveted its experience is amongst both students and employers. Then there’s the Holberton School (paywall), a two-year tech program in San Francisco that turns complete novices into engineering experts.
“We have some students who have found jobs at NASA and Google,” Holberton’s co-founder Julien Barbier tells Quartz. “These are proof points of the result—of what you can achieve by going through this type of education.”
Companies, particularly those in Silicon Valley, are progressively looking away from transcripts and extracurriculars. Google, in particular, truly couldn’t care less about what school you attended; it only wants to know if you can a) solve problems, b) lead, and c) offer the company something different. IBM says that about 10-15% of its new hires don’t have a college degree. And in Google’s view, the experience of going to college can sometimes even detract from a candidate’s qualifications—serving as only an “extended adolescence.“
Look into bootcamps and short programs
Coding bootcamps have exploded in popularity over the past few years, to the point where there’s even a $3,000 prep program to train people to apply for coding bootcamps.
If you’re interested in a computer science career, such programs are one of your best shots at getting there fast. With so much interest in the market, options abound for schools with different business models, teaching styles, and niche focuses. For maximum benefit, there are programs like 42, a coding school backed by a French billionaire that plunges students into a four-week “piscine” (literally, a pool) of immersive, intensive training, inviting them to spend nearly a whole month coding, day and night.
Just make sure to do your research—as not every bootcamp is capable of delivering what it promises, and some of them are falsely riding the wave of the success of others before them.
Take advantage of digital wonderland
The most obvious but underrated answer to expensive college educations is the internet. Online learning, while still scoffed at by many on the teaching end, is becoming much more popular amongst students as digital education platforms improve. Coursera, the world’s leading online learning platform, offers thousands of non-degree programs that teach essential skills.
One of them is “Learning How to Learn,” offered by the University of California-San Diego, which teaches the basics of picking up information: something that most colleges don’t ever bother going over.
“For a lot of people, face it, if you’re in class—somebody’s walking in and out, somebody else is leaning in front of you, you miss things and you can’t stop the instructor continuously to ask them to go back and repeat something. You’re wasting time,” Barb Oakley, the professor teaching the course, tells Quartz. Oakley adds that she struggled in college herself, often losing focus on instructors’ lecture materials after the first 10 minutes. Via her online course and others like it, students can rewind, absorb information at their own pace, and pick up skills they might otherwise never have even considered in a traditional college lecture setting.
Coursera is not alone: edX, Udacity, Khan Academy, UoPeople also provide free online courses, many of which are uploaded by professors at Harvard and other top schools. Putting aside the matter of the official diploma, you can receive a near-complete Ivy League education these days without ever setting foot on a campus—or paying a cent.
Oh no, education cannot be over rated. This is why.
A close look at the meaning of education beds the essential need of it. Education, a relevant tool for a worthwhile life. In line with the asked question, one is forced to re-ask, what is education? And how can it be over-rated? So, what is education?
Education as a phenomenon has enjoyed different definitions and consequently, one definition cannot be said to be Superior. However, world wide acceptable definitions are commonly identified with unified trend. Let us consider these,
"Education is the process of acquiring the body of knowledge and skills that people are expected to have in your society. A good education develops a critical thought process in addition to learning accepted facts. It also encourages intellectual curiosity, which will lead to lifelong learning." https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-mean-by-education-and goodeducation. According Oyekan (2000), education is the aggregate of learning processes. Ngada Audu James says, "Education is the only instrument that when wisely and effectively utilized can develop the entire society. It is expected to prepare the medical doctor for his profession, the engineer, architect, teacher, politician and all other professional towards the full development of their society. Education is the single largest industry that is expected to attract the lion's share of a nation's budget if meaningful development is to take place as it affects all spheres of life of the totality of any society."
From the foregoing, education is simply the clothes one must wear to avoid being called mad or immoral. It is a basic necessity for basic human existence.
Therefore can we overemphasize the importance of education? Oh no! No education, no life.
Meanwhile, people often confuse school with getting education. Succinct difference is ostensibly created. Education could be formal, non-formal or semi-formal.
While formal education is classroom-based carried out by trained teachers. Or we say, formal education is a planned learning content that is carried out in a structure by trained personnel. On the other hand, non-formal education doesn't have a designed learning content and it doesn't take place in classroom. Or we simply put, Organised and systematic learning activity conducted outside the formal education system.
Non-formal education and training is understood as education and training leading to qualifications which are not directly recognised as such by relevant national education authorities (or equivalent authorities) or not leading to any qualifications at all (although recognition and validation of learning outcomes could then be used and indirectly lead to formal qualifications). This concept is therefore distinguished from formal education and training, which: (a) typically takes place in (or, in the case of formal apprenticeships, dually involve) the system of schools, colleges and universities and other formal education institutions; (b) normally, although not necessarily, constitutes a continuous ladder of education for children and young people; (c) is directly relevant for the determination of the highest level of formal education attained. It is also distinguished from random and informal learning which are not intentional and/or not institutionalised. (https://unevoc.unesco.org/go.php?q=TVETipedia+Glossary+A-Z&id=185)
From the disparity above, can one establish that either of the two major forms of education can be overemphasized? In both ends, education commands the living of a person.
Actually, if one is not educated (formal and/or informal), one is simply 'dead'. However, schooling can be over rated in the sense that one needs more than going to school to become 'useful' and at times the best in one can be discovered outside school. Just like the footballers, sweemers and so on. They don't teach these and some other talented skills in school but can be grabbed outside school yet, the ones that don't attend school but maximize their innate potentials are individuals that outstanding and can compete with their counterparts that have attended school.