# Experience or formal education?



## Helweh18 (Jul 30, 2013)

Hello Fellow NT's,

So the question is... How much weight do you give to formal education? Do you think that formal education outweighs experience?

The reason I ask this is I have some formal education (I did not complete my bachelors degree) and I have professional certifications in my field. I have 5 years of experience in a high technology field. I recently secured a contract with a firm. After I secured the contract they sent me some paperwork for background checks etc. One of the fields is education. They never asked me about my college education during this entire process, I'm not sure if they just assumed that I have a degree or they just don't care. You cannot learn the skills required in my profession in any university or college. This is part of the reason that they have to hire someone like me. I know plenty of people that finished their degrees and are working in low paying, dead end jobs that have no opportunities for growth in the future. I realize that there are a lot of people that look down on people like me for not "sticking it out" in college and finishing a degree. Maybe they think people like me were too busy partying or too lazy to finish a degree. Please vote and comment below. I am interested in your feedback.

P.S. I purposely did not put a "both" option because I would like to see which is more important to you in general, obviously a good mix of both education and experience is preferred.


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## Xix (Sep 20, 2014)

Both. As to the weighting it depends on what you do.
The more you know the better off you are. I have found this to be generally true.


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## ninjahitsawall (Feb 1, 2013)

I would also say both. Although I am a bit disillusioned with the value of both at this point in my life. :laughing:


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## Ziwosa (Sep 25, 2010)

The amount of formal education someone has mostly just tells me how much bullshit they can put up with and how good they are at ass licking the right people.


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## lightbox (Mar 5, 2014)

I would be too lazy to study most things in depth without formal education. I need that as a basis on which to build experience.


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## Eos_Machai (Feb 3, 2013)

Formal education seems quite useless in most cases, except that it is required for most careers due to the guild-mentality of professional groups protecting their status. 

You rarely get anything from higher education that you cannot get by yourself. Your professor's powerpoint lectures are crap compared to much that you can find on the Internet, and you can sneak in anyway without actually taking the course. And the books that you are required to read, some of them can be good but you can read them anyway. Often there's better books to read. 

I've spent four years at the university and it seems quite worthless. I learn much more on my own. By reading quality litterature, having intellectual discussions with friends and strangers on the Internet etc.


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## SweetTsubaki (Dec 8, 2014)

Both are important but we live in a weird society wher you need to get diploma yet reproach it when you have them because more often than not you lack experience and the other way around is also often true.
Both represent different kind of knowledge and enable you to have a better understanding of things. 
It really depends on what you want to do with what you've learned/


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## HAL (May 10, 2014)

Shit, tough poll. I can't even vote because I'm too central with my view.

Experience is pretty much vital. Yet formal education can make a person rocket ahead once they've added 'experience' to their arsenal.

Depends on the line of work, too.

Wait. EDIT: I've decided experience is better. And if you want to learn something, teach yourself. I certainly learn far better when I sit down on my own and study in my own time. Class work never seems to do me any justice.

So in conclusion: Experience and self-guided, _informal_ education.


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## Orlando_Marquez (Dec 3, 2014)

Experience. 

Sent from my Winchester 1300 Defender


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## stayinggold (Sep 2, 2014)

Why not have both? The notion that somebody would go though high school or university without gaining life skills and experience is ridiculous. Formal education is an experience itself. 

However I am very wary of people who say that their 'life experience' some how makes them wiser or more intelligent than others. Many people go about their lives learning or doing very little and I often feel like it's used as an excuse or a way to make people who have focused on their formal education feel bad. Then again I do live in a country noted for it's anti intellectualism. Most people I know who have claimed life experience have spent their years drinking and partying. 

When it comes to jobs experience and connections trump formal education, that became obvious to me very early.


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## PowerShell (Feb 3, 2013)

Depends how far you want to go. In a technical position doing the technical work, I'd say experience definitely trumps education. When you start getting into more big picture thinking or the higher you go into management, the less hands on the work is and the more theoretical it is. That's where having a degree is important. It expands your level of thinking. That's why I am pursuing an MBA right now even though I just do technical stuff.

Basically when I worked for a trucking company I saw how not having an education can limit you. I saw the guys who had been with the company since the early days when it was small. They were good at knowing how to handle the day-to-day operations of a trucking company but they weren't good at running a multi-million dollar company with several layers of management under them. Most of them only had high school educations or maybe an associate degree. The CEO also only had an associates degree. I mean they had decent levels of success but upper management would get involved in little petty nickle and dime stuff of day to day operations that would be penny wise but pound foolish in the scheme of running a large company.


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## Scelerat (Oct 21, 2012)

Your ability to take advantage of experience as a learning tool is dependent on your ability to abstract from your experiences. Formal education teaches abstraction and teaches in an abstract manner, thus giving people tools to better work with their experience. People who are 100% formal education or 100% experience, such equally much.


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## spylass (Jan 25, 2014)

At age 16 I would probably answer "experience" but after more life experience, I would say formal education has its merits. (Ha) 
I've come across so many autodidacts that think they know everything because they study what they want to study- experience what they want to experience, but they are so clueless on so much because they don't delve into things that are outside their interests, and nothing forces them to examine topics from multiple angles. That's what formal education does. 

Trying to learn everything on your own will give you a very biased self education.


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## elixare (Aug 26, 2010)

Personally if I were hiring someone:

If the candidate is more of a concrete hands-on learner then experience overall trumps education - especially if the job itself is more concrete/hands-on/experiential/physical in nature

If the candidate is more of an abstract theoretical learner then knowledge/education (formal or not) overall trumps experience - especially if the job itself is more abstract/theoretical/knowledge-based in nature

I can tell you though that the market overall uses education to eliminate candidates and then differentiate the leftovers mostly based on their experience


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## NTlazerman (Nov 28, 2014)

Formal education is something mostly sensors use as a value. Intuitive persons see past it. Though, if I'd hire a sensor, it would still be a good guideline. But for Intuitive types, I'd talk to them and find out that way if they're good for the job.

Technically, I would say experience is far more valuable in real life.


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## Helweh18 (Jul 30, 2013)

***UPDATE*** 

As suspected the company I am contracting for assumed I had a degree. I guess they had a background check company call my college. HR contacted me saying that they couldn't verify that I had completed my degree. I told HR that I had stated in the paperwork that I did not complete my degree but I am an MCP (Microsoft Certified Professional). To avoid any potential "issues" I immediately contacted Microsoft, downloaded my transcripts and submitted them to HR. Which seemed to satisfy them at their end.


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## NothingElse (Nov 26, 2014)

Despite being en route to a Ph.D., I value experience above formal education for the reality check it hits one with...

Confronting discomfort stings, but it's an instructional agony. Knowledge arises from study, but from suffering emerges wisdom.


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