Month: December 2019

Are YOU Stifling Your Own Career? No 3 - The Lure of Qualifications
Degree

Are YOU Stifling Your Own Career? No 3 – The Lure of Qualifications

- by Claire Hamilton

From the day of your birth you have been nurtured, cared for and steered by others in the direction that will hopefully meet the challenge of a preparation for life and self-responsibility. Your parents and the education system have been the main parties in this endeavour. And a large part of their goal must have been to prepare you for the work-place. So… what to do?

“TRY TO BECOME NOT A MAN OF SUCCESS BUT RATHER A MAN OF VALUE”… Albert Einstein

If we go back 50 years when less than 5% of kids went to University, the impact of further education was far greater than today. A degree was regarded as a passport to a career and meant, almost without exception, that you would never be unemployed. You would be placed on a pedestal by employers, given the opportunities in the work-place to which others were not entitled and thus your place in more senior positions was, with a little effort and training, assured.

Compare that with today, when upwards of 40% of students go on to a form of further education (FE). The odds of you making waves in a career on the back of a degree (for the graduate of any University or College) are dropping like a stone. The numbers are simply against it. Soon it will be the exception rather than the rule not to have a degree.

The passport, then, is no longer  why bother? struggle through a course, the examination system, the stress and the strain of further education?

The answers to this most important and vexing of questions is found in a blunt and self-effacing scrutiny of exactly the purpose of further education for you personally. Let’s examine the mains possible reasons:-

a) Any degree is still a “bottle-top” that half of …

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Advice for Adjusting to University Life and How to Be Successful in Further Education
Educational

Advice for Adjusting to University Life and How to Be Successful in Further Education

- by Claire Hamilton

So it has come to one of the most important times in your life, choosing weather you should go to university/college. Well it is a nerve racking time for anyone, you have to weigh up so many different costs and benefits of enrolling at a university/college. If you do choose to go to university/college the key to doing well is to preparing! Here are a few tips for anyone looking to go to university and to help you with the transition from high school to university.

Studying comes first.

Sure up till now you may have managed to get through school with a decent grade and have put in hardly any work, well that stops now. Most drop-outs say that the main reason for leaving college was the change in the workload. At university you are expected to learn outside the classroom, and study of your own accord. Many other college students get caught up with their social activities and neglect their work. If you want to succeed at university you need to put your studies first!

Take a light course load.

In your first year of college you should try to be easy on yourself and give yourself some time to settle in. Try to take courses that you are familiar with, and try to keep your course-load to a minimum. This will give you time for getting adjusted to your new environment, and remember it is always better to have a few courses which you do really well in rather than having tons of courses that you do really badly in.

Make use of Resources.

Before I joined university I had never even taken out a book or sat in my school library or even asked a teacher for help. That all changed once I flew the coop. …

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