by Leon Li

Created on: August 16, 2009

One often assumes that a tertiary education will ensure a better future, but that is not always the case.

When a student graduates from college or university, the areas they will most likely be working in are part of the information sector, and some jobs in the service sector (the other sectors being industry and agriculture), depending on what they took. These include careers in medicine, computers, finance, education, law, and business.

If you were to interview anyone with one of those careers, without a doubt, they'd mention that there is a lot of stress that comes with the work.

They really can be stressful; I've done a bit of research on the internet and found that the occupations with the highest attempted and actually suicide rates are those in the health care and law professions. Health care and law are two of the most competitive subjects in today's age, and even though a student in these fields may find a well-paying job after graduating, the stress that comes with it may be too much to bear. These professions also bear the highest divorce rates.

For most university or college graduates, getting a job could take years. If they specialize in a field that there's not much demand for, such as mathematics or astronomy, chances are that they won't find a job for a long time, and might even have to look towards other careers. Furthermore, because they had spent so much time in school, they had virtually burned wasted some vital years while they could have spent that time building a more stable and prospectful life.

Much of the time, a student who decides to go directly to the workplace (with the require training, of course) can make a huge amount of progress in their lives in the time that a university student is studying. University courses are often offered for four years, and if you decide to take a four year journey to build a foundation for your life instead of studying something that won't even guarantee a job, it might just pay off.

For example, the founder of Dell Incorporated, Michael Dell, started his business way back in 1984, when he was at the University of Texas studying to become a doctor. At the age of 19, he , and started his computer company by exploiting the fact that people of the time didn't understand computers. Because of this, he was able to buy low-quality computers and upgrade them with high-quality parts, and then sell them. Dell Incorporated now makes $60 billion a year.

His decision to leave university to continue his business was definitely the right decision. Not every young person will be as successful as Dell by leaving university to start a business, but if a nineteen-year-old university student studying to become a doctor suddenly has a wonderful business idea, and leaves school to build on it, then chances are, they should at least be partially successful in doing so. Even now, you could start a business the way that Dell did it, and chances are you'd make an extra couple thousand dollars to invest in even bigger opportunities.

Even if you aren't a tech-savvy college student, there are several other jobs you can get with simply a secondary education. Being a police officer or joining the armed forces can be an option, or if you aren't in for anything physical, being a music or art teacher.

It just goes to show that you don't have to get a tertiary education to be successful in life. Millions of people in the developed world are doing perfectly fine, without any form of tertiary education. It's sad that society nowadays has decided that you'll have more of a chance of making money by becoming an employee of a big company rather than using your brain to build your own business. If you can commit your mind and body, anything is possible.

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