Some people believe studying in a college or university is the best way to prepare for a successful career. Other people prefer to get a job as soon as they leave school and to develop their career through work experience. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

Some hold that formal

education

offers little to attain professional

success

, while others believe that the value of

education

in career

success

is undervalued. The way I see it, pursuing

education

offers more than just the soft skills you need to perform well in a

job

and equips one more fully to attain

job

success

. It is certainly true that an early

job

gives a person an edge over his peers. In

such

a

job

a person is able to attain financial self-sufficiency early on and devote more time to enhancing the

job

related-competencies by,

for instance

, working with highly qualified professionals, taking skill-specific courses and attending different professional seminars.

However

, the option of having access to all of these is not readily available. Alternatively, young people who go through formal stages of

education

build a theoretical framework and a strong network of professional friends.

This

framework is important to join certain professions that require high levels of training

such

as doctors, lawyers and engineers not to mention professions in which one has to create,

for example

, historians and physicists.

Additionally

, the value of the network that one builds while at college is hard to overestimate. It is no secret that professional

success

very often depends on how quickly and well you can accomplish certain tasks, tasks that become notably easier if you have connections in certain jobs or industries. To conclude, while

first

-hand, hands-on experience is invaluable, it is unrealistic for young people to pursue under all circumstances, and college offers more than the soft know-how and basic competencies, it does so at the additional benefit of building a network of “useful” friends.