| Not necessarily. Sometimes the better advice is to tell someone to _not_ go to school. Someone who might be a very effective (and well paid) tradesperson, but has no aptitude for University, would be much better served (and probably less stressed) by entering the workforce as young as possible, becoming a journeyman, and raising through their career without a formal education. There are at least three reasons for this: 1. By entering the workforce as young as possible, total lifetimes earnings (and more importantly, savings) are maximized for a longer period of time. 2. If the individual has no aptitude (or desire) for higher education, then there is a very good chance they will neither get the credentials, nor the knowledge that comes with a high level education. 3. Even if they did manage to squeak by and, through sheer grit and determination and stubbornness, acquire the higher education - they might now slot themselves into a field of endeavor for which they are singularly not suited for - only to find 10 years after working some white collar position, that they really, really wished they had been in construction/electrician/blacksmith/what have you... Frequently the path to maximizing total lifetime earnings, happiness, impact, and productivity is not through higher education. I think that there is a lot of observer bias on most of our part, because most of us have gone through at least some post-high school education and would to believe it generally offers value to those who do likewise. I've got a least one friend who really should have never gotten his Computing Science degree. He is brilliant in ways that I'll never, ever, match - and should be building houses, not trying to work in IT - just not his gig. On the flip side, i have a quite comfortable six figure income, and never completed university - I just have an aptitude for working in IT. I really believe there is a correlation/causation problem with the "Higher educations leads to Higher Income" - the one exception being that a Yale/Stanford/Princeton/Harvard/MIT/Ivy League graduate probably raises the ceiling (and position opportunity) for candidates above what someone without those credentials would have. But now we're talking about the difference between making $150K/year as a mid level manager and $750K/year as a Sr. VP - not as relevant to the masses. |
There are definitely people who would be better off dropping out as early as possible and start working but that's a minority.
Even electricians and mechanics require tertiary education. (Otherwise, what does my brother training to be a mechanic mean when he says he's going to "class"?!)
Dropping education as early as possible might be a good idea if your aim is to work in a field where knowledge can be easily self taught. (Like IT or painting). Even then, a one year crash course I think would be quite helpful. I self-taught myself programming too, but I only learned about "unit-testing" in university. I guess you can argue I could learn that in my first job, but what if I want to, say, do a startup? ;)
>> I really believe there is a correlation/causation problem with the "Higher educations leads to Higher Income"
We're talking about higher education leads to higher chance of being employed.