IA1
I
read an article in The Economist journal: Going
to university is more important than ever for young people.
Summary:
South Korea is extremely competitive when it comes to
college. There’s a test that determines which college students qualify for, or
if they even qualify for college at all. Essentially, the test determines their
future. If they don’t do well, they go to a mediocre college and receive a
mediocre education, which in turn leads to a mediocre job. Americans are “weeded
out” by government funding. College tuition is so expensive that if a student does
not have good grades, they will not get scholarships and will therefore not be
able to attend a good college. It’s statistically proven that the better
college a student attends, the less likely they are to drop out and they will supposedly
reap more benefits.
Better educated people are expected to be more
capable and innovative. Employers look for degrees to signal if people are
motivated or competent. Those who drop out of college are grouped with those
who never attended at all. Some professions, such as software developer or CEO,
have evolved—due to advancements in technology, for example. Such jobs have received
an increase of graduate workers, because college-educated people are most
suited to work them, and the wages have increased. However, jobs that used to
require no degree, such as bartender and cashier, are being worked by people
with degrees and the wages have dropped. It is believed that people who receive
college educations get a “return on investment.” Their lifetime earnings are
supposed to be higher than if they hadn’t gone to college. But some college
graduates don’t find jobs in their field, or end up working a job that used to
require no college education at all like bartending. So, while going to college
is considered a must for young people, is it worth it?
The article deals with opportunity cost – what you give
up when choosing one option over the other. People who go to college are giving
up money that they could be earning if they had entered the workforce straight
away. On the flip side, people who don’t go to college are giving up the
potential to earn a higher salary and make more money later on. Perhaps I am
using this term wrongly, but it seems to me that people who opt to get college
educations have a comparative advantage. They may be sacrificing a steady salary
for about four years or so, but those who don’t go are losing the potential to pick
and choose their job—as having a degree makes you more appealing and worthy to
employers—make connections and form relationships that could benefit them later
on, and make more money in the future.
It seems that college grads have an advantage over
non-college graduates because they have more to offer. In class, we talked
about how businesses are evolving. Nowadays they require skills that can only
be gained through education past high-school. For example, technology is
constantly advancing and rapidly changing. Business has become digital, and if
you don’t know how to use technology, you won’t be able to thrive in today’s
business world.
However, there is still the debate that students who
don’t go to college may not be giving up anything at all. I went to the section
in the textbook that discusses college educations, and it mentioned Hewlett-Packard
CEO Carly Fiorina majored in medieval history and philosophy. Pursuing a degree
essentially doesn’t mean anything. You could go to school for one thing but end
up with a job that is unrelated to what you studied. I know several people who
this has happened to. After reading this article and thinking it over, it seems
to me that college is like a seatbelt. You need it in case. There’s no guarantee
that it’ll be critical to the outcome of your life, but it’s guaranteed to give
you more security.
Plans for upcoming assignments:
I
plan to begin working on each assignment at least a week before it is due.
There are multiple parts to each assignment, so I will break it up into chunks
and do one thing a day until it is completed.
IA2 – I will check out the Business and Entrepreneurship’s LinkedIn group
for a possible role model. If I can’t find someone, I will either ask
classmates or the instructor for suggestions.
IA3 – this assignment looks as though it will be significantly more work
than the others, mostly because it involves drawing from material we learned
throughout the entire semester. I’m sure I’ll be referencing notes I’ve taken
from guest lecturers. There’s also a lot of questions I have to be able to answer.
My work for this assignment has already begun. Every class, we’ll be discussing
or learning something that could be valuable to the completion of this
assignment.
IA4 – I’ll have to remain alert for events I can attend that don’t conflict
with my schedule. My goal is to attend an event by the end of February. In the
IA4 instructions, it says “As part of IA03 submission,
you should also turn in an envelope with at least eight business cards,,,” Are the
business cards are due with IA4 or IA3?
IA5 – I could choose to do this assignment now if I wanted. I’ve taken
notes from several guest lectures we’ve had. So far, the ones that have
impacted me the most are Andrew Guanci’s lecture on Corporate Social
Responsibility, and Rebecca Harris’s lecture on entrepreneurship.
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