My Manifesto: The Incoherent Ramblings of a Madman

I put a lot of value in a university education; however, like anything it has its pros and cons.

Without a degree you run a risk of being someone else’s shit kicker, while being a shit kicker can in a lot of circumstances be a very noble job, it does not always equate to a decent wage. In contrast to this, if you get into the right job, work hard enough, you will be four (4) years ahead of anyone who choose to go through the path of becoming a university graduate. Therefore they will graduate at a lesser wage and standing in the community than you.

Am I saying that university graduates earn less than those who do not graduate from university? That is not what I am saying at all, although statistically this would be a correct assumption. More often than not the richest people are not book-smart but money-smart: they have a head for business; a head for making money; and a drive and determination to match. In short a go-getter will make a decent living no matter what path they choose to follow. The idea of a university degree is that it will eventually improve your wage and standard of living by decreasing the amount of physicality in the job, that is, you get paid more money for doing a less labour intensive job that those who do not have the qualifications to do the work. In practice, this rarely goes according to plan because your stress levels and levels of responsibility are increased, while there may be less physical exertion there is usually more mental and emotional exertion.

The biggest benefit of university education is the benefit you will gain by improving your understanding of the world. You will realise the extent of most other people’s ignorance. When I say this I am not suggesting that those without a degree are ignorant, I am merely suggesting that we are all ignorant – the extent of which, those, who have the benefits of a university education are better trained to judge.

University increases your analytical thinking ability skills. A friend of mines mother is a bank manager. I asked her about interest rates and when she predicted they were going to go up, she replied: “they will go up when I get the fax in my office to put them up, not before, not after”. It never occurred to her to ask the question: “why do they go up?” It is not her job to question why – it is her job to put them up when told to put them up. In contrast to this and with the benefit of four (4) years of a university education behind them, the university graduate knows why they go up, and when they're going to go up - they can predict the trends in the system to take the maximum advantage of it. Are they more intelligent than the non-graduate? Not at all – they merely have had more exposure to analytical thinking than the non-graduate and cannot help but to question.

There are always exceptions to the rule, and of course it depends on the individual and what courses they took but with younger people starting out in the workforce - a university degree makes a huge difference in their capabilities, especially in their capacity to learn new things that are foreign to them.

I would like to stress I am not suggesting that university gives you intelligence. That is something that you either have or you don't - no amount of studying will make you intelligent. However, it is how you use your intelligence that makes the difference. It is in analytical thought that university graduates excel at compared to non-graduates, it is in research capabilities, and it is in self education. There are always exceptions to the norm and someone without the validation of a university degree is more than capable of all those things. I am not saying that you must have a university degree to have these qualities – as that would be somewhat self righteous and discriminatory. I am not saying that u need a degree to have these qualities, I am saying that generally a person with a degree excels in these areas compared to those without.

Four (4) years of analytical thinking makes a difference to a person – I believe for the better.

The major draw-back, other than wage considerations, to a university degree is that in life there are two ways of acquiring knowledge: book-smarts and experience-smarts. A university graduate will have book smarts but not the practical experience to fully put it to good use, in contrast, the experienced person will have the experience but not the book-smarts for understanding.

Experience-smarts takes a lifetime to gather – book-smarts takes four (4) years.

A combination of the two (2) is a very powerful, sometimes deadly, weapon.

Choose your own life path – but hell, look at it like this, whether you get a decent education or not you will be paying for it for the rest of your life with your taxes so you may as well make the most of it :)