Where does real education come from?

I’ve heard folks from an older generation tell me that they worked their way through school. I thought this meant that they went to school part-time and worked part-time to pay for their classes. This was of course true, but not in the sense we think about it today. Our parents had it easy. College wasn’t something that everyone did, but if you wanted to, you could easily afford to take some classes and work a few hours a week and pay for books and some tuition. Also, whatever the difference was usually their parents would help them out. When I approached the college age, the story was different. My parents said “we can’t afford to send you to school, so you are on your own.” How many of us got told the exact same thing? Students no longer can afford to pay for school through working, by petitioning their parents for help, but instead by borrowing large sums in order to pay for it; an investment of sorts.

            I am not writing this to argue against the cost of college, how the debt many students incur by borrowing from the government gets them there, nor the type of school a person should go to. In my estimation, a for-profit university, and a state school are all pretty much the same. Of course there are differences in delivery method, accreditation and other benefits, but the similarities outweigh the differences. The value created by obtaining education is the determining factor that makes the difference.

            In business, the education comes from actually doing the work before it ever will from reading it in a book. I’ve learned more about business by working than by earning my Bachelor’s degree. However, the deadlines and late night research projects while trying to scramble for a high grade in class has given me the edge I haven’t been able to find in the workforce (yet). There are of course numerous additional sources for education. I hope to be able to site this blog as one of them.

            Any entrepreneur will tell you that the secret to success is to have goals, write them down, and never stop going after them. Failure is often the best teacher and the more failure you have the more success you will get. Any college professor will tell you that the more education you get the more opportunities you have. The better grades you get the more valuable you will be in the real world. So who is correct here?

            There are countless stories about business owners that have accumulated tremendous amounts of wealth and either never went to college, or dropped out. There are also countless stories that speak otherwise. There are stories about people who claim to owe everything they have to their tenure at school, and others who have spent a lifetime climbing the collegiate ladder only to be penniless after the fact. The truth is, college really only helps those people who want it to help, and working does exactly the same.

            Education is just the pursuit of knowledge and it is good any way a person can get it. Experience is an educator and so is college. I had the privilege to do both, and I think I got the best of both worlds. I worked at a college while I was a student. I suppose I made my parents proud!