When you think about education and its worth to people, you must ask yourself, why do people commit to getting post-secondary education if it takes at least three years of your life and it costs thousands of dollars, just to mention few a things?
When I was considering this question, two possible answers came to mind. The first one, and I would say probably the most common answer, is because people want to have “a good life.” Therefore they need to earn money to accomplish that and consequently they need to find a well paying job to get the money they need. This is especially true for women these days—-who still make 77 cents of every dollar a man makes in this country. Studies have shown that people with a bachelor’s degree can pursue better wages in all kind of occupations, while people with no degree can have job opportunities in all kinds of occupations but with the lowest wages for each one of those occupations. In average, in 2008 for the state of Illinois, people with a bachelor’s degree had a wage of $57,000 per year, while people without post-secondary education degrees and just with some kind of job training had a wage of $33,000 per year. For me, this could be called the “utilitarian view,” where, education is just the pathway to get wealth and what people think are valuable things.
The second answer was a more integral concept, education as a way to develop your own individuality, your personality, your way of thinking, as well as to obtain the life to want. A simple and general definition of education is “any act or experience that has a formative effect on the mind, character or physical ability of an individual. In its technical sense, education is the process by which society deliberately transmits its accumulated knowledge, skills and values from one generation to another.” What this definition is telling us is that education is much more than acquiring the skills you need to get a job; it is a life experience and a construction of each individual and subsequently their society.
In this sense, I have the perception that our labor market policies are pushing people to earn specific kinds of degrees based on the demand of the labor market. This is perfectly sound judgment about the unemployment problem facing the United States and many other countries all over the world. But the bottom line is that many people are choosing their degrees or training programs just because they think that’s the only way to get a job under these economic conditions. In general, colleges and post-secondary education institutions are investing more in programs related with health, sales, technology and marketing. So the questions here are, are we just implementing band-aid solutions to deal with the unemployment problem or are we really thinking about our future and the long-term stability of our economy? Are we taking these decisions based on the projections of these occupations or are you just trying to fill the positions available now with all the unemployed people?
Many studies have proved the positive correlation between higher educational levels and better labor outcomes, meaning not just a good wage but also a successful development of individual and professional goals. This is what I meant when I talked about a more integral concept of education, a concept that includes both sides of the coin, giving a balance. A perfect example of this is when you think about all what women have gained in terms of education in the last decades, reflecting and proving the correlation. For 2009, the percentage of men and women with at least a high school degree and college degree was almost the same. Even more in 2008, a higher percentage of the higher education degrees were earned by women.
As you can see, there are many sides of this debate. But how do we solve it? I do not have the answer, but what I strongly believe is that our society needs to reevaluate how we approach education in order to address the needs of future generations. I do encourage you, as a member of this society, to think about the education you want and the education we need. This is our challenge!
On the frontline,
Ana Serrano
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