Traditional wisdom tells us that the degree one earns will serve one in all sorts of fields. So in order to get a job with a decent salary, one may, depending upon one’s interest, be thinking of enrolling in a higher education institution that offers various majors. The eventual goal is to get the degree necessary for the application of a job.
Of course, there will be a place in the job market for a specific degree holder. Such fields as medicine
and law undoubtedly require more than raw intellect. And the job market rewards the skills one has got from previous training in higher education.
Yet, if one wishes to pursue a business career as such, in industry, finance or health care, the new paradigm says: learn all you can about the world first and pick up the specifics as you go along. A successful entrepreneur, any millionaire would say, doesn’t take a master’s in business administration. This, however, doesn’t mean that formal education is of less value.
The testimony of John H. Doffing, then director of marketing for Paraform, Inc. in the US, a promising Silicon Valley startup that makes 3D software for the entertainment industry, is particularly revealing.
With a triple degree in political science, history and philosophy, Doffing says: “Nothing I learned by studying Plato or 20th century superpower politics translated into how to put together an advertising campaign. But it did teach me to think, respond and reason.”
Intangible qualities, such as the capacity for abstract thought, effective communication and leadership, it is argued, are acquired most effectively during one’s enrollment in a formal education.
No doubt, this argument is true and, thanks to their previous schooling, many of the degree holders from higher education hold important positions in prestigious companies.
But, many fresh graduates are also experiencing frustration once they are deployed in the workforce, as what they have learned, the ideals, too often confront the reality they are facing. They find out that the skills they once learned and thought to be important turn out to be obsolete in the workplace.
Indeed, many employers are of the opinion that the skills and knowledge their employees got in formal education are inadequate for the constantly changing situation and needs of the companies.
Job applicants nowadays seem to realize this and are, in fact, pretty savvy to see what their prospective employers expect of them.
Most modern companies now are nimble and aggressive in hunting for potential applicants regardless of their majors. The new paradigm they adopt now requires that, apart from the background of formal educational training they previously had, applicants have such additional traits as loyalty, integrity, adaptability, flexibility, creativity and institutional knowledge. In other words, intelligence matters and these additional traits, coupled with hard, work certainly pay off.
With this new paradigm, job hunters engage in stiff competition for talent, struggling to show off what they can sell to the prospective employers. Indeed, the climate in the job market today is typified by the search for talent.
The gap between the skills the employees got from their previous formal schooling with the companies’ dynamic needs is often bridged via professional training of their employees. This is obviously part of a company’s strategies to boost the performance of its human resources.
Attending training courses is felt by most companies as the best option to upgrade the performance of their employees. The clearest advantage of choosing this option is that training provides a short cut to the acquisition of practical knowledge required by most companies in a relatively short period of time.
For those employees with a ready- to-learn attitude, a short training course provides them with a new spirit of working in a world full of excitement and challenges.
Adele Scheele, American education consultant, includes professional training as one of the top 10 career strategies for college graduates. She contends that not only does professional training sharpen sensitivity toward the working environment, but it also enhances leadership skills.
Another benefit is the curriculum is normally designed on a goal-oriented basis, specifically geared to the practical needs demanded by the participants. Philosophical underpinning of such a curriculum emanates from the social reconstruction theory, which puts an emphasis on the needs of the society that are to be met by education and curriculum.
Many of the success stories of businesspeople (both degree and non-degree holders) have tantalizingly revealed that participating in training courses helped inspire them with an entrepreneurial spirit and eventually develop them into experts.
The path to the top is always open to everyone. Surely, taking part in a professional course is not the only determinant factor to succeed. Nevertheless, learning from practical knowledge and experience of a successful professional via training can fuel the desire and passion to reach the top.
The writer is associate professor at Atma Jaya Catholic University, Jakarta. He is chief editor of Indonesian Journal of English Language Teaching and can be contacted at setiono.sugiharto@atmajaya.ac.id.
