Education vs. Experience

There is a debate that rages throughout the halls of academia and the business world. The debate is not new, nor can it easily be settled. You see, it revolves around whether experience is superior to education and visa-versa.  You can imagine that the experience side of the argument doesn’t get very much support in academia. So, most of the debate occurs within the boardrooms of businesses all over.

Let’s face it, education is expensive. The average cost for a private university is roughly $39,000 a year. Multiply that out by 4 and you just paid almost $160,000 for your bachelor’s degree. Granted there are ways to make this less expensive, but even in those cases you will end up spending roughly $40k to $60,000 for your bachelor’s. That is a difficult pill to swallow for someone thinking about coming out of college and not being able to find a decent job right away.

 I attended a financial seminar about 10 months ago from a guy who wrote a book on the cost of college. As he was doing his research, he discovered that the average student pursuing a bachelor’s degree in very average subjects like communications were leaving college owing on an average $180,000. This is because everything is charged, and the students don’t pay attention to what they are spending.  They just swipe their student card and go. This blind spending creates a problem for these students coming out of college, in that they are cash broke and unable to maintain a lifestyle that allows them to enjoy the fruits of their labors.

It’s no wonder why the “give me my schooling for free” crowd seems to be getting louder. They see the writing on the wall, and they don’t want to be held responsible for their poor choices. This is a topic for another article, and I had better stop there or this will become a very lengthy treatise on the entitled mindset of today’s young society.

So, as many individuals who are unable to afford higher education beyond High School look at their options, many are opting out of pursuing a degree. They are going right to work trying to make something out of their lives. They gain tons of experience and can do their jobs with great effectiveness.

Sounds good right? These people are good at what they do. They are loyal to their employers. They have years of hands on experience over their counterpart just coming out of college. So, what seems to be the problem? Where’s this debate that I mentioned?

The debate lies in what happens to these non-college educated peers over their college educated counterparts. Many times, they are passed over for a promotion to allow someone with a degree to take the position. How is this justified in the eyes of these employers? Simply put, a degree to many employers is a sign that you can take orders and follow a prescribed regiment to accomplish a task, or in other words, you can jump through hoops and bark like a dog to come out on top. I know, that was a little harsh, but the truth hurts, so get over it.

In my businesses I’ve always placed experience over education. I view it as the best educator. A text book can only take you so far, and lecture and demonstration can only prepare you for a very finite list of experiences. While on the other hand, experience is a real hands-on education. The employee is learning and gaining a deep understanding of the needs of the organization and the area in which they work. This education is priceless and should never be dismissed as being less important than the education received at college.

As a financial advisor I would rather hire a person that I felt that I could train and teach to my specifications, rather than try to fix the errors instilled by a professor teaching out of a text book. Life is organic and changes rapidly. It takes someone with life experience to be just as fluid and empathetic. I am a very particular person when it comes to how I do business and what I expect from my employees, and I’ve found that experience serves me better when it comes to hiring.

That’s not the case in all things. When it comes to a doctor, I would rather have an educated person practice his trade rather than someone who grew up with an interest in medicine and practiced on others. Education has its place in society. I just believe that it is disingenuous to make a blanket statement that education is always paramount to anything else and trumps experience.

So, in conclusion; education is important, and experience is important. Society should never tell a person that they have no empirical value to society, but rather that worth is based on knowledge regardless of where you acquired that knowledge.