Education Gives You A Greater Edge

Many get it completely wrong when they think of education as just a means of learning how to read and write. No. education is much more than that. It is a means of developing a whole person, with the benefit of knowing how to read and write, acquiring marketable skills with which to provide service and get rewarded, and developing and enhancing our cognitive abilities.

  The importance of education cannot be over emphasized. It is useful in ways too numerous to mention. Below are some ways in which education gives you greater edge.

1.       Skill acquisition: Education is the major means of developing human resources into skilled work force needed to work on capitals to create wealth or value for the well-being and development of society. Our ability to create value or provide service begins with education or training. As stated earlier, the key to accessing wealth creation platform where you trade your skills for rewards is education or training. Without education or training, to be in control of a wealth creation platform, you may have to establish it yourself from the scratch and provide all the facilities required. But with education, you can get access to and be part of an organization you did not even know how it was conceived or started. You can even rise to assume partial or complete control of the organization.

2.       Mobility of labour: In terms of mobility of labour and participation in today’s global network society, the educated have less hurdles. They are most likely to secure jobs and can move from one job to another even in fields that are not their primary area of discipline. They travel the global village with relative ease.  With internet access in every country, the educated are increasingly on line and in touch around the world.

3.       Opportunity:  Education is also a good means of forging relationships which bring you closer to opportunities. The higher you go, the more likely you are to come in contact with organizations or people who may bring you better opportunities.  They may give you opportunity themselves or link you up with opportunities or impart to you knowledge or information that can open doors to opportunities. The more training or education you receive, the more valuable you become, the more complex task you can handle and the better the services you render.  Hence, the greater your chances of getting opportunity to serve and be rewarded. There is no substitute to education. It offers greater opportunities and options with respect to service and reward. In fact, you will be a lot better in whatever you are doing if you are educated.

4.       Remuneration:  Labour is ranked according to the level of education and qualification obtained and paid accordingly. Graduates of tertiary institutions, mostly regarded as skilled labours because they possess skills of greater value are often paid higher, followed by those of high school and those with vocational skills, regarded as semi-skilled labours. The unskilled labour is often the least paid. Hence they occupy the lowest rung of the social and economic strata.

5.       Social class:  Social class in Nigeria is largely determined by two factors among others, namely education and income. From the foregoing, you can see that higher education begets higher income. Those who have these two things can easily get the necessities of life. Thus they enjoy a more comfortable life and are highly regarded in the society. They constitute the middle class in the society and when they encounter certain opportunities, they can soar to the upper class. On the other hand, those with lower level of education receive lower pay. They cannot satisfy all the basic necessities of life. Hence they are less regarded and constitute the lower class in the society. They usually miss out on vital opportunities since they do not have the resources to take up an opportunity when it comes. Hence they remain poor while the rich and educated keep getting richer.

6.       Qualification:  In today’s world, everything is being standardized and regulated. This means that before you can practice as a professional in any field, you must obtain training and be certified as having done so. If you have no such certificate, you cannot be employed or allowed to practice as a professional. Since all the professional qualifications are issued at the higher education level, it means that you cannot practice as a professional unless you pass through a higher institution. Other wise, you would have to work as a semi-skilled labour or as an unskilled labour, doing menial jobs to egg out a living, with its attendant low income potential. Meaning you cannot meet all your basic necessities, you occupy the lower class in the society, you are less regarded etc. In fact, this makes you a second class citizen as you cannot obtain all your rights.it takes considerable expenses to assert some of your rights. The qualification you obtain through formal education is universally accepted, whereas the trade you learn in a particular locality might not even be known or accepted in another clime. Nowadays, many governments are standardizing entrepreneurship by including entrepreneurship education in school curriculum. Students who learn through this medium are more in tune with globally recognized standards in their chosen discipline. Students are better informed and exposed since the curriculum takes into consideration the current state of development in each discipline, state of the art facilities and global best practice. Hence they can take up an employment or practice anywhere they like without fear of rejection, knowing that their standard meets minimum expectation anywhere they find themselves.  The qualification you obtain through formal education is something you can continue to build upon. For instance, if you have a degree, you can go for a master’s degree and a doctorate degree. You can also go for a post graduate diploma. You can even switch to another course still at the university level.

7.       Awareness:  Formal education raises your consciousness such that even if you do not work with your certificate, you are still better off. The exposure it gives you makes you to be more:                 
    (i) aware of yourself and the society at large. And awareness is the beginning of success. So education makes you to be more successful.
    (ii) Mental development brought about by formal education helps you to think and reason in a more logical manner. It transforms people from crude and brut nature into civilized, tamed beings.                                                                                                    (iii)  Education helps in developing and enhancing your cognitive ability, thereby enabling you to be more useful. This makes for better relationships as it is easier to deal with a person who understands things easily than dealing with one who does not.
    (iv) Capacity Building: Education is the major means of building our capacity to do things or achieve goals.Capacity is built from the knowledge and skills acquired. Education enhances our ability to learn or acquire knowledge and skills, which in turn, enables us to achieve goals. Knowledge is power.
      You will be a lot better in whatever you do if you are educated.

8.       Organization and neatness:  Education helps you to be neat and organized and enables you to make logical presentations.