Having a Degree Vs Having the Ability to Succeed: What Schools Don’t Teach Us

Last year, an article titled “Only 150 of 3500 US Colleges Are Worth the Investment” ran on Yahoo news and it garnered over 6000 comments online.

The findings came from a book from former Secretary of Education William Bennett where he spoke about why getting a college degree today may not be worth it and why Americans should not just keep sending kids to colleges without serious consideration on the ROI.

Bestselling author and management consultant Hellen Chen, who has trained and consulted top CEOs around the world and helped many colleges graduates to have working skills, gave her first-hand experience.

“This may be the inconvenient truth. But in most professions, the resultant success of a person’s career has very little to do with which school a person graduates from and what degree he has.” Said Chen, after having worked with professionals from different fields in different countries in 20 years.

As a CEO herself, Chen has hired various staff of different experiences and background. Some staff has not even graduated high school and some has had top degrees from prestigious universities.

“It is not true that having no degree means the individual can do only mundane work and having a degree automatically makes a person the top producer. The exam system in school is simply just its own system. One may pass the exam by memorization but in actual work place, the actual skills needed are production skills, not examination skills.” Chen commented.

In an interview from Los Angeles, Chen spoke about the misconception which parents have towards schooling. Chen said, “Parents naturally would like their children to do well in life. But getting a college degree is so far from any guarantee of success. Many of our young generation unfortunately follow the same mindset and thus after spending time and lots of money in colleges, they get very disappointed when they stepped into the workforce.”

“There is a value of course to formal education. We need skills like reading and writing etc. But if one does not know what one wants out of schooling and just follow the crowd, one would have invested in vain with literally nothing in return.” Chen said.

Chen’s new book titled “What Schools Don’t Teach You: 10 Most Important Lessons For Life” will be released in May on Barnes and Noble.

Chen has written 22 books on the subject of career success, personal success, plus marriage and family success. As a consultant, she has been on over 200 media interviews in 20 countries interviewed on life issues. Chen has also been invited in Asia and in America to conduct seminars about productivity, life success and relationship success.