Every now and then I get drawn into the age-old argument about education versus experience. On one side of the argument are people who seem to have an irrational resentment towards others’ educational credentials. They ask, “how is it that smart people can do such stupid things?”
The answer, quite simply is that education and intelligence are not necessarily correlated.
On the other side of the argument are those that wave their communications degree from the local community college around like it was a ticket to success. They ask, “I studied hard, why won’t they make me a vice-president of something?”
The answer, quite simply, is because you don’t know anything yet.
People who want to seriously argue whether education or experience is better, apparently have neither. It is an argument for brain-dead people. Here are a few points to ponder:
- Education is simply a different form of experience. If this is all you have, it is limited at best.
- People who have 25 years experience at something need to be questioned as to whether they have 25 years experience (like a neurosurgeon) or one year’s experience 25 times (like a barista). Sometimes anything past the first year is a waste of experience.
- When things don’t happen the way you want them to, it’s not necessarily a knowledge (education) gap. If education was the only thing that mattered, then nobody would smoke, very few would be fat, and nobody would watch TV (or use any other recreational drugs).
The bottom line is that any education or development is going to make an individual better than s/he would be without it; it won’t make one individual better than another. So stop fixating over education versus experience, and go improve one or the other.
