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College or Vocational Education
Daily writing prompt
If you could make your pet understand one thing, what would it be?
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College or Vocational Education

Fall Crafts for kids

It’s that time of year with crisp air and colors on the trees. Pumpkin patches are full of pumpkins and squash are ready to be picked. Why not have a family bonding day and do Fall crafts with your kids? You can get some sponges from the store; wooden clothes pin, white paper and some…

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Halloween Costumes for Children

It’s that time of year when parents have to think about the type of costume they want to buy or create for their children. Each child is unique in their own way and in their interests. They may have a favorite cartoon character such as Thomas the Train or Dora the Explorer. There are so…

kimsenecal's avatar by kimsenecal

Children and self esteem

One of the most important jobs of a parent is to make sure that their child develops healthy self-esteem. Children do not come into this world with poor self-esteem. Life circumstances can change the amount of self-esteem a child develops. Parents are the first teachers of children and the encouragers that should be highlighting their…

kimsenecal's avatar by kimsenecal

about

I have had a passion for writing since I was a child. After raising my children, working in education and human services I hope to make writing a full-time career. I write about parenting and child development.

College or Vocational Education

Which should you choose for your children? Should they get a college education or a vocational education? Hands on vocational experience that will take them directly into the job market or a college degree that depending on what they study may not allow them to get a job in a field they studied.

Sure, any kind of education is good but, what is the best path for your family and for your child. What does your child want to do? Can you afford a college education? Are there jobs in the field in which they are studying? These are all questions to ask yourself when you are making a decision as to what type of education your child should have. Does your child like to learn by doing hands on work or prefer work that is not hands on. It’s all an individual choice as to what works best for your family. I have a degree and it is still tough to find a job in this economy unless I get advanced education or want to work in high stress, low pay positions that are high turnover rate.

Choose wisely so that you are not later regretting the choices that you have made about the degree you have chosen. Take the time to sit down and think about the day-to-day activities you will be doing. You also want to think about the time and expense each type of education will take.

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One response to “College or Vocational Education”

  1. David Avatar
    David

    From my experience, having a university degree and also practical training courses in the electrical engineering / software engineering area, and a long career in IT, I think there are several questions to consider.

    Firstly, and this may sound strange, but how important is a good income to you?  In one of my early jobs, I was was building IT systems for a vehicle assembly company, and their offices were on the same site as the factory.  Through a friend in HR, I got to meet and share lunch with a couple of people from the factory rather than with the IT team I worked with.  One guy in particular, Ian, taught me some interesting lessons.  Ian was intelligent, with a degree from the university of life, and we had many wide-ranging, intelligent discussions on many topics over lunch.  in his spare time, a surf-lifesaving instructor, ham radio enthusiast talking in morse with friends all around the world at night, and had a private pilot’s licence.  He also had never left home, staying to look after his mother, and eventually inheriting the house.  He needed very little money so worked as a fork truck driver delivering supplies around the factory.  No overtime, no politics, no dress code, no need to be running at 110%.  He had enough money for his needs and enough free time for his real interests.  To him that was a win.  To my IT colleagues he  was a loser, but their lunchtime conversation was limited to last weekend’s sport and how drunk they got of Friday night – boring!

    Secondly do you want to do a job or work your way out of doing it?  Trades, and related physical jobs usually suit people who want to do that.  My father was a draughtsman and worked his way up to being a professional gas engineer.  He ran the drawing office and stilled a little bit of hands on drawing, and was responsible for designing gas reticulation systems for new suburbs.  He made a comment that what he liked was that he could choose how hands on to be.

    In the IT industry, I have seen some people come out of practical tertiary qualifications stayed as expert developers, because that is what they liked, and some who moved on to higher level system design or project management, doing only limited coding because they enjoyed both the detail and the wider picture.  What I also found was that it was the ones who were typically not well suited to the focus of the job who moved on to become the managers, with varying degrees of success.  More recently, I have also seen people come out of very theoretical “client experience designer” tertiary programmes grossly overvaluing their theory and unable to adapt to the real world.  Unfortunately that fit in well with the people who have come in off a theoretical “Business management” degree with the same ignorance is bliss mentality.  But they are the ones who climb the ladder fastest – scary!

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