Dear L.FIGO.M,
You surely have a very interesting viewpoint. While I don’t believe that a university degree is a guarantee for success, I do feel that it’s a very important stepping stone towards the gate of success! Success is certainly not a random whim of fate or a chance roll of the dice. For those who are fortunate enough to achieve success, some of them turn around and proclaim that success is not a destination but merely a journey. I personally think of success as a series of realized objectives and achieved goals. Success is also a balanced aggregate of character, virtues, integrity, academic records, practical knowledge, technical competency and hard works. You mentioned Thomas Edition and Bill Gates as the representatives of people achieving monumental success without attaining a university degree under their belts. But this is an extremely rare case in real life. What is the percentage of high school graduates achieving huge economical success in this world? I’m not an idealist but a “pragmaticist”. I firmly believe that education is everything. To a large extent, it determines how successful you can be in all your future endeavors. Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton sure couldn’t become masters in physics without an advanced academic background. I recently read in a book that talks about the law of cause and effect, and the law of probability. The final effect of having a successful career can only derived from the initial cause of striving hard in university and graduating with a bachelor degree. And the law of probability stipulates that the odd is against those who try to compete in this fiercely competitive dog-eat-dog capitalist society without a post secondary education.
You talked about ability and I interpreted it as technical competency and hands on experiences. Thomas Edition definitely had this kind of strength. He spent day and night in the lab and developed such a high level of mechanical knack that could make many of his assistants, who were mostly professional engineers feel inferior. Bill Gates was already a veteran programmer in the BASIC computer language when he was in high school and his knowledge in computer science far surmounts many computer science graduates. The author of the book “100 simple secrets of successful people”, Dr. David Niven pointed out that becoming an expert in your area, mastering all the ins and outs of your trade, is indeed a secret of success.
Here’s what I learned from my own experience. A good friend of mine, who is also my high school classmate, let’s call him Sam, is a bright young man with excellent marks in Algebra, Chemistry, Physics and high school math. He stood side by side with me on the first class honor roll in high school. Upon graduating from high school, he decided to take a short cut in life and went straight into the work force instead of enrolling in college like the rest of us. He got a good job with Coca-Cola pumping coke and all of us had to live frugally on student loans and weekend part time jobs. He had a lot of money, nice sports car, gorgeous girlfriend, while I had nothing for the first five or six years since the inception of post high school life. But today, after receiving my advanced education accreditation certificate, I have a prestigious career with an income more than two and a half times of what Sam is making, even though he’s been with the same company for over fifteen years. As you can see, a degree makes all the difference. It’s not a guarantee of success, but it’s certainly a bridge to success. Without that bridge, the vast majority of people will fall flat on their faces in their pursuit for success.
The door to all the top executive jobs in large corporations only open to those with an advanced degree or a professional designation. Without a university degree, rests assure that opportunity will highly unlikely to knock on your door.
I’m a third generation ethnic Chinese born abroad, but the core values of Confucianism are still passed down from one generation to the next in my family. My younger brother, and half a dozen of my little cousins, who came over to Canada at a very young age, all have these values instilled in them. They all lost their mother tongue and can no longer speak, read or write Chinese, but they all firmly believe that the possession of a university degree is an “inborn mission” in their lives, and they all strove to complete their post secondary education. They all came out of university with degrees in Geophysics, Computer engineering, Electrical Engineering and Finance. They all joined the rank of the so-called “Elite” class in this Caucasian-dominated society of Canada. My late father once told me that the greatest heritage I can give to my children is not wealth but a good education. And he’s a man of his own words, he acted as a mentor who continuously gave great encouragements to his children and finally drove them to attain high education, and indirectly but literally, great success.
I’m a long time advocate of advanced education. As Adam Smith stated in his “Wealth of Nation”, a well-educated person not only increases his own intrinsic value, but also increase the value of the entire society. A nation can almost always benefits from its highly skillful workforce. I read many times in the People Daily newspaper about the Chinese government’s effort to improve literacy and enhance quality (and qualification) of its population in order to pursue the “four modernizations”. It would benefit the entire nation immensely if every citizen in the mainland motivates him/herself to advance further in academic education, through every possible means such as correspondence education, broadcasting education, self-study courses etc. A well-known British scholar once said, “Knowledge is power”. And I take that as the ultimate truth.
Advanced technical know-how attracts success. Highly educated people won’t suffer the drudgery of searching for success, because the law of probability says that great wealth and great success almost always eventually follow knowledge and wisdom, and same can only be acquired through a good education.
Live long and prosper!
Neil (from Canada)
