Qualifications: education vs experience

You’ve just been diagnosed with a life-threatening medical condition and need urgent surgery to treat it. Two doctors are available to perform the surgery: the first graduated top of his class, spent a further five years studying the procedure you need in intricate detail and wrote a thesis on it which passed with distinction. You will be his first live patient. The second graduated with mediocre marks and went straight into practice without studying any further. He has successfully performed the procedure you need five times a week for the last seven years.

Who do you choose?

Certain professions require basic minimum qualifications as a prerequisite (eg lawyers, doctors, engineers, accountants), but if your career is not leading you down one of those paths, is higher education really necessary?

The answer, as is so often the case, depends on who you ask.

Those in the pro-higher education camp believe that the background and insights learned in the course of a degree or diploma provide a solid foundation that cannot be replaced by hit-and-miss work experience. They also tend to be of the view that candidates who have obtained tertiary qualifications will be well rounded and that the process of obtaining a degree or diploma filters out those who are capable of fulfilling the role from those who are not.

However, with the spotlight cast on the cost of higher education by the #FeesMustFall campaign, the numbers in the pro-experience camp are growing. Graduates are often saddled with huge student loans, there is no guarantee they will get a job to enable them to pay it off and they have spent the last three-plus years incurring debt, while their contemporaries who opted for on the job training (by choice or circumstance) would have been earning – albeit only an entry level amount.

Proponents of experience over education hold the view that there is a difference between knowing the theory of a job and actually being able to do it, cope with the stress and get along with co-workers at the same time.

What are your thoughts on the topic? We’d love to hear your views in the comments below.

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