University Degree: Good Rule or Bad Rule?

[Sangetsu]

Life experience is a big part of what makes a person, it's long been said that "experience is the best teacher". Education is very important, but how we apply our education to our chosen profession is equally important. Universities are a little bit removed from reality, and though they are good places to acquire knowledge, they are often terribly short on teaching common sense.

I went to university while serving full-time in the Army. Personally, the Army taught me much more about the world, and life in general. Most of those I served with were not university-educated, but I would consider them well-prepared for nearly any profession they decided to enter.

The basic requirement to get a work visa in Japan is a university degree, or three year's consecutive experience in a particular profession (such as teaching, IT, etc.). Service industry jobs are not considered "professions". I don't know where the "10 year" story came from. I know a few teachers who qualified for visas with 3 years teaching experience in their home countries. This experience must be verified with work contracts or tax records.

[acjama]

Originally Posted by BobbyCooper

Like Kintaro Oe

I can understand what and why Kintaro does what he does. I have been professionally grateful for people who have done that. Unfortunately I'm quite sure that when Kintaro comes back and tells he's ready to be a great lawyer with his experience, employers are going to say "Sorry dude, I don't see you having basic lawyer skills".

In the meantime, I go to the library and read Kintaros notebook in a week. Then I too know what Kintaro thought to be important enough to write down. Then I read Pierre's similar notebook when he was circling Normandy, M'Gumbos notes from Nigeria and Pancho's from south Peru. Then I know what all four thought was important, do some comparative analysis, realize what part of their experiences were cultural and what universal in nature, which is more than what those four combined ever realized. Then I get a huge grant and I'll do a little travelling myself. That last sentence actually happened, that's why I'm 8000 kilometers from home right now.

Originally Posted by Sangetsu

Most of those I served with were not university-educated, but I would consider them well-prepared for nearly any profession they decided to enter.

I'm afraid I must disagree without even knowing your comrades. I did my mandatory service in the special forces before entering university. But all that was worth nothing in practice, naturally. Only after learning, applying and even improving the Coddington and Conrady equations did I land a decent job on the other side of the world.

The very real bottom line is, the practice of hiring "a good guy" instead of a proven professional is the reason why absolutely everything went terribly wrong so fast at Fukushima nuclear plant.

[GoNative]

Originally Posted by WingsToDiscovery

I agree. I always feel like people who don't have a degree are always trying to lowball my education by saying their X amount of experience is worth more. And, people always treat the two as if they're mutually exclusive. Throughout my education I've held several different jobs and internships, both providing me with valuable experience relevant to my field of study, which has killed two birds with one stone. That's worth more than "life experience," as you said.

Yep I also worked all my way through university. I also took a year off and worked for half of it and then spent the other half travelling around Sth America. During my time at university I became the president of a human rights group and was a leader in the mountaineering club. Really don't believe I could have got any better life experiences by not going onto tertiary education.

The main thing about getting a degree in my opinion is that you really have to learn how to learn. Unlike secondary education where a lot is practically spoonfed to you by the teachers, in tertiary education you're basically on your own. You really do learn how to gather information and learn from it. Later in my professional life where I had to do training for various jobs I've done I noticed that I was able to breeze through the training, taking on the knowledge required much quicker and easier than those who did not have a degree. Those without degrees just weren't as used to studying and taking in information. Degrees often won't give you any direct on the job experience but they will give you the ability to get up to speed pretty damned quickly.

I think having a degree as a minimum standard of education is a very good rule. You got to have some sort of minimum standard of education don't you? A degree isn't that hard to achieve. Now if they ramped it up to only accept those with a Masters or PHD that might be a bit overboard.