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This video is part of our professional development series focused on career paths, networking, resume and cover letter, interviewing, and performing in the organization. This series compliments our business and law lecture series.
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Jason Mance Gordon
The Business Professor
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Okay, what I want to talk to you about now is the role of education and employment or
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how education affects your ability for employment or career paths or futures, etc
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Now we focus primarily on the idea of employment first and even if you want to start your own
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venture or even if you want to go out on your own in some way, shape or form in the future
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generally your early experiences have a huge impact on that. That is an area where you can go out and satisfy the need or want of a customer or client is
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largely dependent on the knowledge and skills that you've already acquired. And lots of times when you, even entrepreneurs will take on a role early that allows them
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to acquire some of this knowledge and skills. Now is prior employment absolutely necessary to going out into the market on your own
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No, it's not. But in many ways, it can help or facilitate those efforts and it can certainly give you
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an understanding of a market that you primarily, that you may not have understood before or
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the market that you primarily work in. You'll gain a more in depth understanding of that
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So let's move into how for employment purposes. Getting a job or getting started on a career path or track
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What's the role of education in that? As you can see on this chart, you're exponentially more likely to get a job if you have higher
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levels of education and particularly within the business school, business students generally
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tend to have a higher degree of employability or employment percentage higher than that
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of some of the other majors and right up there with information technology or the healthcare industry
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So, with that in mind, education itself does lead to a higher degree of employment and
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it generally leads to higher introductory salaries and there's a strong correlation
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between the ultimate salary achieved, that is a level of salary at some given point in
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in the future or some age in your life or number of years in the workforce versus those
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who have a lower or higher degree of education. So anyway, so understanding that your education level is going to have a huge effect on that
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So now to the purpose of this video, why? Why is education so important in employability and why does it have such a relationship to
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how much you make? So anyone who has gone through school or varying levels of school understand that there are definitely skills that you acquire in school but more broadly than that it a general more broadly than the actual skills that you
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acquire, college itself is a signaling function to employers. Okay, with that amount, now a technical school versus a say a bachelor's degree school or
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four-year institution is going to have a different signaling function. So a technical school is going to be more focused on skill-based learning and it's going
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to be more focused on demonstrating competency in a given task in that way
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Now as you noted from the slide, an individual with an associate's degree or a technical
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school degree typically has a lower salary point and a lower total career achieved earning
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potential than those who receive a four year bachelor's degree. So again, why is this
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Well it comes down to the signaling function again of the four year school or the bachelor's
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degree where you may acquire actual skills in a technical school that are superior to
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or the skills that you would not have learned in your bachelor's or four year's degree
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or at least commensurate with. But the signaling function of the bachelor's degree is this
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It's a well rounded degree. Certainly there's a large liberal arts component, history, science, philosophy, different things
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of that nature that introduce you to so many different aspects of life that are important
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to individuals. So, what it does is introduce you to so much it makes you generally, whether you realize
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it or not at the time, a more well-rounded individual. That is, you are better able to understand other people, their needs, their wants, their
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preferences, their influences, things that they value, etc. So with that in mind, so you go through a four year degree, you have that signaling function
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to an employer. Now, when you have a concentration or major specialization in school, that again has an
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additional signaling function. Not only have you gone through this program that's made you well-rounded, you actually
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have been introduced to a certain level of skill or ability in this program
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Take studying accounting for example in the business school. Very few people, if anyone, would ever come out of a business school sufficiently proficient
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in accounting to actually do that for a living. They need additional on-the-job training generally under the supervision of another account
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And if you're going to be a CPA, you actually have hour requirements, 1,000 or 2,000 hours
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before you could get your certification as a public accountant or your CPA license So with that in mind there an understanding that you need to work and acquire a level of practical skills
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But if you're going to be hired into that position and you're going to be set up to
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continue to learn, the bachelor's degree in accounting has that signaling function that
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you have been exposed to all of these areas. And while you're not proficient, you at least have that knowledge to draw upon so again
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you can perfect those skills on the job or at least improve those skills on the job to
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become proficient at it. So that's one that you're a well-rounded individual
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Two, that you've been exposed to specific skills that are relevant to the employer
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But three, there's another signaling function there. With the understanding in mind that you're going to learn the majority of what you do
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actually on the job force that when you get a position you are going to learn to do that
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Well there are going to be things that you love to do and things that you hate to do
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Now an employer when they're bringing you on they know that you have paid money to spend
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anywhere from three to five years in an academic institution for a bachelor's degree and during
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that time you're able to prove yourself that you can take all of these mixed classes
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Some of the classes you may hate history and love English. You may hate both of those and love business classes, management classes but hate the accounting
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classes, etc. With that in mind, you undertook this 3-5 year experience and you performed well at it as
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demonstrated by your grade point average. Now some employers don't even look at grade point average
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They simply want to see that you were successful and that you undertook the whole process and
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were successful at it. In the job, they are going to give you things that you like to do and you'll be engaged
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and you'll do well. They will also give you things that you do not like to do
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Now if you demonstrated well in school that you perform well on testing classes that you
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hated or generally were not interested in. Likewise when you're given task or responsibilities in the job, you're also going to do those
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tasks or jobs well simply because you have that level of motivation, that level of desire
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So I caution you against to do what some students do and say well I don't even like those classes
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I didn't try but I do well in my major classes. Well, that's a very negative signaling function that if you don't try hard and do as well
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as you possibly can in those classes where you don't enjoy them or like them, the employer
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can assume when you're giving tasks or jobs that you don't like, you're not going to
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be engaged you not going to do them very well and quite frankly you may be looking for the door You may be looking for a different job that doesn require you to do those So again a huge negative signaling function there
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And lastly, so much emphasis now is placed on graduate education. That is to go on for a master's degree or other professional degrees such as a law degree
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That teaches you the skills to do a certain job or task, etc
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This is extremely common in accounting and finance and again some law degree is mandatory
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to practice law, medicine, etc. But the importance that's now being placed on the graduate education, your performance
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in undergraduate is 50% or more sometimes of the consideration of whether you can get
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into business school or whether you can get into that graduate school
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If you didn't prove yourself at the undergraduate level, still in some of those classes that
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have no relation to your master's degree in finance, that history class has nothing to
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do with your ability to run the capital asset pricing model. But nonetheless, it will affect your ability to get into business school
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So again, your performance very early on becomes extremely important to your ability to get
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into graduate school which often times is the barrier, is the hurdle for you getting
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into the type of job or career function that you want to be in
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So with that in mind, just to summarize again, so you have the signaling function of college
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You have a technical track where you learn specific skills which can be extremely valuable
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in certain areas. But in other jobs, typically in general management roles or when you're going to be managing
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other people and things like that, when you need to be well-rounded, the college education
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and the bachelor's degree has that signaling function that you are well-rounded
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It shows that you are exposed to a litany of different topics and you have a concentration
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through your major and other topics. Part three, it's a proof that you're dedicated to your work, to classes that you didn't like
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as well as the ones that you did like. And four, it's a prerequisite and a huge factor as to whether you can get into a graduate
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program that may be necessary for you to start or be a part of the career path or track that
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you choose. So with that in mind, education is extremely important to personal and professional development
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and it serves all of those functions that affect where you'll start and ultimately where
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you'll end up in life
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