Academic Routes, the only way to Success?

[Artz]

The definition of success differs from person to person. One could take economic success as a touchstone to label a person successful in life, ignoring his of her other failures, like divorce, health, inefficiency, etc. Others may look at a capacity for overcoming challenges, irrespective of what someone earns and the nature of their private life. So who is a successful person and who is a failure? Do school and college grades and examination results provide a way of predicting or ensuring future success? If that is true, then we should encourage as many young people as possible to go to university and work hard to gain formal qualifications. But is it true? Aren’t some college drop-outs like Bill Gates and Richard Branson hugely successful icons of success? And should we automatically consider the millions of young people who have not had the opportunity to gain academic certificates to be failures in life?

Taken from the site Debateabase

[Rook]

If not having a degree means you're a failure than that means I am, and will stay for foreseeable future, a failure.

Except I've made it on my own since the day after high school was over, I got married at 19 and am happily married three years later, own two motor vehicles and maintain my own country. I don't consider myself a failure. Wealth, education, social status, title...none of that is a proof of black and white success. Accomplishments are what define success and whether or not one considers a something an accomplishment depends painfully on perspective.

If you define success as black and white as academic education, where do those who have their education but do not have a career because they are still living with their parents fall in? They don't. Education is simply a potential piece of success, and not necessarily a cornerstone of it. Having it can make someone more successful, or debilitate them with loans and four years of job experience lost. It depends on your goals.

[Artz]

Adding to that, how can one depend anything on educational success when the educational systems are so.. undeveloped. I mean, yes, you need to know a lot about your subject to be able to go into University.. but you also need to be very academic. Just moving onto my A levels (equiv to the last two years of American high school), you notice the jump from one year to another. Its a whole new level of study. They expect you to go out and find out information by yourself, rather than being given the information in GCSE. I don't know if its the same in American schools, but how can one judge only on academic study, when its so lax.

An example, in GCSE (high school) is that we were doing a mock science exam and everyone who undertook it found they got D's in the results. However, the government decided that because the general results were so low, they were lowering the grade-mark. Therefore everyone in the class now had C's and had passed.

On top of education being so lax, as Ari said, success is judged on different levels. Someone learning to put a ball through the hoop, in basketball, is a success.. even if it only achieves you a level 2 for academic purposes.. if the person had struggled to make a hoop, thats a pretty good success in perspective. I guess it differs person to person.