This morning, Catherine Toth blogged about Cost of your college degree on The Daily Dish blog in which she shared:
The other day one of my former students posed a question that’s been on my mind lately: how much is our college education really worth?
I started typing up a response, but as it got longer and longer, I decided I would copy and share it here. Here it is, with emphasis and some additional comments I added after I posted on Cat’s blog.
I think a Master’s degree is now what a Bachelor’s degree used to be 10-15 years ago. Meaning, many positions already expect everyone to have at least a Bachelor’s; possessing a Master’s helps you get promoted or perhaps get better pay. The degree requirement is often used as the “first cut” by interviewers or HR personnel. Why interview 100 people when you can just say “Bachelor’s degree required, Master’s preferred” in a job description and then only have 25 applicants to have to screen?
To students who question the value of an Associate’s degree, I think they should see it not as the end of their higher education career path, but the beginning of a continuum of education. This is one goal of the Hawaii P-20 Initiative. Even the military requires recruits to have a high school diploma. And that same military encourages officers to get advanced degrees. You can only go so high up in the ranks with a Bachelor’s degree. I know a Lieutenant Colonel who must get a Master’s degree to be promoted to a full bird Colonel.
Even those who enter so-called “blue collar” fields require formal education and training. For example, carpenters have to undergo an apprenticeship program. Professional drivers who require a CDL (Commercial Drivers License) also need formal education. So education is needed for so many jobs in our community, not just writers.
However, going back to what “maxcat” said in the comments, good, logical writing is a skill in any profession and any environment. Therefore, those with more education may be better-equipped in such environments to not only succeed, but also to excel. That’s not always true; I’ve worked with people with Master’s and Doctorate’s who were terrible writers. And I’ve also worked with people who only had a high school diploma who were excellent. So as with anything in life, your mileage may vary.
In the end, the point, and the question one should be asking is not “Should I get an education?” but rather “How much education should I get?” And once you get an education and a degree, that shouldn’t be the end of it. Professionals like doctors, lawyers, and accountants are constantly increasing their knowledge and skills by attending seminars and workshops. For a good writer, that can be doing a lot of reading, writing, or even blogging. And anyone that wants to improve their writing, but may not necessarily consider themselves good writers, can improve their skills by doing all of that. Anything that stimulates the mind is good for you!
Finally, going back to the cost factor of education, we always seem to wonder about the cost of educating ourselves. What about the cost of NOT educating ourselves? For anyone working an entry-level job for an entire lifetime, without promotions – not because of a lack of knowledge, commitment, loyalty, or hard work – but simply because of a lack of a degree, that has cost them far more than an education would have.
So make the leap today! Start by clicking here to explore any of the ten campuses of the University of Hawaii System. Remember, education is an investment; and by investing in your education, you are investing in yourself.
Now, if only we could all agree on this, then we could encourage all sides in Hawaii’s embarrassing Furlough Fridays debacle to come together and do what needs to be done to restore education in this state and assure everyone that we truly do value education and our future.
Mahalo!
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Please note: The views expressed here are mine and mine alone. While I am employed by and affiliated with organizations and individuals, permission has neither been asked nor granted to write on the topics discussed here.
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