The Challenges Of Education: The Benefits Of Higher Education

1437 Words6 Pages
In this age, the K-12 education system is merely a long-term extensive college preparation course. This substantial focus on higher education can be attributed to rising competition and the changing demands of society. Over the past few decades, education has provided opportunities for new generations to meet these new demands, advancing society on every level. Indeed, a society must encourage change at the individual level in order to successfully shift the mindset of the society. By pushing higher education toward younger generations, society aims to reap the benefits of an educated individual on a larger scale. Should a major proportion of a society pursue higher education, then the nation would run more efficiently by practicing a mindset unique to the formally educated. Although an informal…show more content…
Opponents of higher education object that learning is not limited to a formal context and thus advancements in society can be accomplished without a formal education. In fact, Jon Spayde argued that a genuine education is a discussion carried on within the context of the society (68). In this case, an individual would learn from in-person experience as opposed to a classroom-and-textbook setting. Then if learning is free, what is the advantage of higher education? Admittingly, real-life experience that accumulates over the course of a lifetime prepare an individual for the real world; however, a formal education provides many lifelong advantages beyond that of an in-the-streets education alone. Even Spayde himself acknowledges that a formal education is correlated with social class in terms of power (67). However, Spayde is not referring to the power of a degree, but rather, the power of the tools, connections, and views that a person with

More about The Challenges Of Education: The Benefits Of Higher Education

Open Document