In The 21st Century, Is A Degree Really Necessary? Flexible Learning Opportunities Can Be A Better Option
Our industrial past has long gone and we are now a knowledge-based economy. As robots and machines evolve to do much of the manual labour, the need to utilise our brain to get ahead has never been more vital.
It stands to reason you need a degree to succeed then. Doesn’t it?
There are some professions where you really do need the structured training of a university degree, such as Law or Medicine. But for the majority of others, the training is on-the-job or achieved through an internship or apprenticeship. And with the jobs market looking sluggish in the medium-term, high-calibre people may be advised to steal a march by entering the jobs market now, and accumulating money and contacts, before perhaps returning to college when they have found a course that will genuinely help their career.
The classic line trotted out to justify/sell a degree has been that it is a general badge of intelligence. This however ought to be highly arguable at the current time, when the acquisition of this frequently useless bauble comes with a huge and worrisome debt attached.
Nowadays, someone wishing to succeed in the workplace has many more options available than they used to:
• if you know what you want to do as soon as you leave school, then you can apply for an apprenticeship;
• or you can take an online business course like an HND while working and earning money;
• or you can go to university for 3 years before starting work with no professional qualifications;
• or you can study Medicine or Law, sure that a lucrative career will be yours.
The problem is that young people nowadays are being pushed into making important life choices earlier than ever. And if they make the wrong choice, they could carry the consequences for decades.
These days however, the chance to learn while you earn is convenient and easily available. Ambitious young people can avoid huge debt yet get the qualifications they need through distance learning courses, with total flexibility and a lack of time constraints – and still continue to work and get paid. With the experience they’ve accrued, they are able to choose exactly the right qualification for them, and give debt the cold shoulder.
A much brighter prospect for many of today’s youngsters, and an opportunity to show potential employers what they’re really made of.
