Transcript:
In my past two videos, I spoke why you SHOULDN’T go to university, but as with everything, there are always two sides to an argument. There are always pros and cons, advantages and disadvantages.
And that applies to your educational upbringing, the beginning of your life’s journey, and whether you should go to college or university, because it may very well be right for you.
Some Jobs Require a Degree
Now let’s get the obvious one out first. Some jobs require a degree, and that’s not something I or anyone needs to tell you. This mostly applies to science and medical fields so we’re talking about chemistry, physics, nursing, psychology, medicine. You know, you need a degree for those. Don’t get me wrong there are plenty of fields where you don’t need a degree, even law is one of them, but these ones, you do.
Signalling Effect of Education
Now the degree is one thing that tells employers that you’ve got knowledge in a particular field, but there’s something else about university that speaks to employers about your ability to work. And this is something called the Signalling Effect of Education.
Because if you’ve spent 3 years at university on that hustle, doing your studies, doing your research papers, it speaks of your ability to work, it speaks about the level of commitment, passion, and dedication to the discipline of pursuing your goals.
But what you need to know about this right is you can only leverage this by getting the higher grades at uni. If you graduate with honours, first-class, second-class, it shows that you were able to work towards that, and it tells employers that you can apply the same level of passion and commitment in the workplace which is exactly what they will be looking for.
And this does give high-performing university graduates an edge over non-university goal pursuers, candidates applying to the same job because they don’t have that signalling effect to give and employers don’t like uncertainty. They want to know that who they’re hiring is going to produce results.
What you gotta keep in mind though is you gotta be careful, because this can also apply negatively in very much the same way. If you’ve just barely passed to get your degree, that is also going to be reflection of your ability to work. Employers know, everybody knows that uni is also a time to be partying, to be getting messed up in all sorts of ways.
And there’s nothing wrong with indulging in a little bit of fun, it’s great in many ways, but what tends to happen is a lot of university students spend too much time partying, too much time being hungover, and too little time dedicated to their actual university work.
And they might try to scrape that passing grade, to just barely get by. Often they will, but then this becomes a reflection of how you handled your work at uni and how you will handle your job in the workplace. Employers will see this.
So the signalling effect of education can go both ways. Make sure you give out the right signals.
Power of Connections
Now what you’ll find at university is you’re going to be meeting people from pretty much everywhere. Just about every university out there has a great deal of diversity, in terms of culture, in terms of personality types, in terms of skills, in terms of where people are from. And everybody is looking to meet each other.
What this means is that when you all graduate and everyone returns home or goes places to start their journey in life, you suddenly know people from all these places. You know people who have different cultures, who have different skillsets, you know, you just have all these connections.
Do not underestimate the power of connections. You may have work to do that requires you to be in different places in the world, you may want to start a business where you need someone with a particular skillset. Because you’ve got all these connections that you made all the way back at uni, you have to spend considerably less effort finding these people than someone who hasn’t to uni.
Soft Skills
Another thing you learn at uni is a lot of soft skills you wouldn’t otherwise be learning. One example of this is research. If I was asked to do a research on any topic, even one I know intimately, say a research on android development of some sort, I wouldn’t know where to begin. I’d probably start by just scribbling stuff in a notebook and seeing where it goes, but I’d be having so much trouble. So I’d have to go out of my way to spend time learning specifically how to write a structured research.
But most university students already know this. Most university graduates have done research papers during their time in education, they know the process and the structure of writing a research and what’s best is that they didn’t have to specifically go out of their way to learn how to write a research. It’s something they learned progressively as they were learning the content of their degree.
And research isn’t nearly the only one of these sort of soft skills that you learn from being at university, you’ve got communication skills, money and time management, critical thinking, problem-solving, leadership, and collaboration.
Collaborative Environment
Speaking of collaboration, this is yet another thing that university provides. While you’re taking your degree, you’re doing it alongside people who are pursuing the same goals as you. Not only do you have your peers but you also have all your teachers, your professors who are specifically there to pass on their knowledge and experience down to you.
And what I was told that as much as these professors are able to teach you, you learn the most by collaborating with all your peers because with all of you pursuing the same goals, wanting to get the most out of your degree, you’re spending your time in all these study sessions, all these brainstorming sessions where you have multiple minds working together discussing topics and projects together.
Conclusion
There are other reasons for why university could be very much beneficial but the ones I spoke about are in my opinion, the biggest of them. I’ve not gone to univerity myself but everything I talked about here are things that I gathered from speaking about this with other people who have graduated uni.
To go or not to go to university. There are arguments to be made for both sides of the coin, and this has to be carefully evaluated on an individual basis because neither is the perfect answer that suits everyone. But what I do want you to know, it’s that you’ve got a choice.
So if you’re at the stage where you’re debating whether you should go to university or not, I’m glad you’ve watched this video but hear the other side of the argument as well which I’m going to put in a card that’s gonna show somewhere up there. Aye, I’ll leave it in the description too.