Has college or an institute prepared you for the real world? (i.e work)

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For me, it's yes and no depending on what type of schools and jobs you're talking about. How about you?
 
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Yes, I believe so. I went to electronics school while in the military and learned quite a bit. After the military, I worked in various jobs as an electronics technician but went to college at night and got an AA degree in Electronics then went on to get a BS in Management.

The electronics education I received in the military kept me employed while I finished the rest of my education. I continued to work as a tech and moved up to supervisor and eventually manager.

Later, I went thru a program where my employer retrained me as a programmer. After I successfully completed a 6 month long, intensive retraining program, I was moved into a programming position and have been doing that type of work since 1986.

My overall education has been a combination of OJT (On the Job Training), institutional education and work experience. I doubt I could do the work I do today (software engineer for large software company) without the institutional education I received along the way.
 
Here's an interesting thought that strolling has touched upon. Do you think that on-the-job training is the best type of education?
 
I dont think university or school has prepared me for work to be honest .I stuied law at university so lets just say I was going to practice as a lawyer like many people who do my degree are now going to do (Im one of the growing minority that isng going to practice) So when I was studying for exams etc I didnt think that was really a mirror of what being a lawyer is like . I had to learn and remember legal provisions for my exam wheras in practice I would not have to actually know any legal provisions off the top of my head as I would always be able to get a book or electronic database to look them up . Furthermore you never do exam style work in the workplace the work you do will almost always be a collaberation between a team of people .

With regards to the issue of on the job training I think it depends on the type of work you will be working and learning . for example lets take the study of medicine . clearly when you are training there has to be an element of on the job training ie clinical education in order to learn some tasks and assess a student doctors performance in certain areas whereas with something like Law it matters less that you have experience doing the job and more that you possess a certain type of intelligence wit and quick analytical thinking . but then again the stakes are slightly lower if you are a lawyer than if you are a doctor
 
Here's another angle to this. I attended CUNY where the city paid for the education. Now because it was easy to get in (you just had to be a high school graduate who lived in the city), people had argued that taxpayer money was being wasted since standards were lowered so people weren't being well educated, it was said (my institute training was paid for by my employer which really wasn't necessary for me to do my job). So I think some can relate to this.
 
In college, you learn how to learn. How to be presented with large amounts of data and how to quickly understand it. At least, that's engineering.
 
Here's an interesting thought that strolling has touched upon. Do you think that on-the-job training is the best type of education?
On the job training is really ok for that specific company needs, sometimes it can be useless else where.....

Whether college/school/institute prepares you is is debatable but I think the teachers themselves do try to prepare you.
 
College is not just about the hard skills.

so for example, when I did my electronics degree, it's not just about building circuits, or learning communication theory.

the reason that you write reports in college is that in real life, you have to write reports.
the reason that you're given vague assignments, (like build an X) is that you have to select resources, evaluate them decide the best then build. - you have to do that in industry too, and it doesn't matter that you'll do that in a team, because it's pretty hard on the reason of the team if you have no experiance of doing that and have never done it.

team assignments teach you to work as a team.
deadlines teach you to work to deadlines.


The thing is college does not give you work experience, and does not "prepare" you for work.
College teaches you things, whether that is facts of skills.
Those facts and skills help you once you've got a job.
(and those skills are why most people without college/university education do not climb as far career wise as those with.)
 
Well I am completing my Certificate 2 in IT and I am only doing like the basics. Next year when I do my Certificate 3 I think I am able to specialise in a certain area. It all depends on what area you work in.
 
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