Higher Education

I believe that a society’s success rate is highly influenced by the higher education offered and the number of people educated at a higher level. Our society specifically views education as a competition based in numbers. What do I mean by that? People seem to believe, within our society, that people are more educated if they have the highest grades, SAT scores, GPAs, etc. But I don’t necessarily believe that, education is about the knowledge and the skills you learn, not about the scores earned on one test. A person can test really well, but once they go out into the world, they don’t know what to do. Higher education is about gaining the knowledge and skills needed in order to be successful in whichever career you pursue. If people stop worrying so much about being the “best” or “number 1”, they may actually be able to gain the actual knowledge they need in the world. Though competition may be helpful in pushing people to discover and create new things, I believe that collaboration is way more helpful. If people work together, knowledge is spread and more ideas are created. I think more disciplines should work more closely with each other. It seems like now each major is completely isolated from another, but to be well-rounded and knowledgeable, you need to know about more than just one topic or discipline.

Also education is something that every person should have a fair chance of receiving. Plenty of people can’t afford college or can only afford two years, but they shouldn’t be relegated to a lower paying job because of their financial standing. Many jobs really don’t require four years at an educational institution, many require actual experience in the field or training. I firmly believe that education is very important to our society, but college isn’t the only way of gaining knowledge. Some careers the greatest knowledge you can gain is not in a textbook or college classroom, but in that actual field. Higher education is a very tricky topic because knowledge can be defined as so many different things, so therefore there is no one way of acquiring it. People also learn in different ways so one way of education is not acceptable for everyone.