Higher education: scope, trends, and institutional challenges

Higher Education

THE BENEFITS of HIGHER EDUCATION

Higher education is extremely beneficial because it improves the essential professional skills required for success in modern vocational occupations. It increases one's capacity to absorb useful information, promotes effective time management skills, and provides exposure to a wide variety of potential interests beyond the scope of one's experiences. Higher education significantly increases lifetime earning capacity and vocational satisfaction and widens the potential opportunities for the pursuit of a fulfilling professional career. It also stimulates non-academic personal development and maturity. Discussion: Prior to the twentieth century, most professions relied upon the ability to perform manual labor and related hands-on responsibilities. In the early part of the last century, Henry Ford revolutionized industry by introducing the production line assembly method, which eliminated many types of jobs, almost instantaneously. Since then, modern industry has continually evolved into automation, and the advent of microchip technology has enabled computers to take over even more work, eliminating many other jobs.

In our society, work has shifted so much from emphasizing physical tasks to requiring analytical skills and intellectual knowledge that a higher education is now all but a minimum requirement for advancement in many career fields. By the turn of the twenty-first century, it is common knowledge that advanced degrees increase earnings and advancement potential significantly throughout workers' lifetimes. Advanced education is a requirement in many fields that were once unregulated and learned by apprenticeships, such as engineering, architecture, personnel management, and even medicine and nursing, to name just a few. Obviously, students who already have an interest in pursuing careers within regulated industries requiring formal training must acquire the necessary degrees required in their fields. However, higher education provides the additional benefit of exposing students to a wide range of vocational fields, usually through "core" curriculum requirements. One of the most critical skills promoted by higher education is the broadening of one's awareness of important geopolitical developments that affect all of our lives. Similarly, higher education stimulates the development of the full range of a student's intellectual potential beyond their narrow interests at the time they enter college.

In the most general sense, higher education emphasizes many of the skills necessary for success, regardless of the specific industry or professional position.

Undergraduate success requires the development of time management skills that are necessary vocational tools across the board. Likewise, undergraduate programs include writing requirements, because written expression is an essential vocational skill in most fields, from entry-level positions all the way up to executive administrators. Writing skills are crucial for success in many fields not typically associated with paperwork, such as in law enforcement, advertising, and engineering careers, for just a few examples. Higher education allows students to improve their writing skills and even to perfect their non-written verbal communication skills by encouraging intellectual discussion and argument in many classes.

By the time students begin a course of undergraduate study, many are already computer literate, at least in the sense of using computers to communicate via e-mail and personal messaging programs. However, many students are not as familiar with other useful computer applications, particularly when it comes to using the Internet to do formal research. In most professional environments, the ability to use the Internet and internal computer intranet networks is critically important.