Obtaining Skills for Your Career through Education

If you want to be an electrician you won't be going to a four-year university but you will endure a 4-5 year apprenticeship. Usually, apprentices start by taking classes at a vocational or trade school to learn about safety programs, electrical theory, and low voltage voice.

After gaining theoretical knowledge, the apprentice will begin working under a master electrician. The apprentice process takes several years to complete and while they are working, apprentices will continue to take periodic classes to ensure that they will be able to pass the state licensing exam. Upon completion, an electrician can expect to start out making about $43,000 a year (more or less depending on geographical location). Top electricians can earn well past $70,000! That's not bad for someone who does not have a college degree!

Other careers that require an apprenticeship program include plumbing and welding.

What is the difference between a college and a vocational or trade school? Wikipedia says "Vocational education prepares learners for careers that are based in manual or practical activities, traditionally non-academic and totally related to a specific trade, occupation or vocation, hence the term, in which the learner participates. It is sometimes referred to as technical education, as the learner directly develops expertise in a particular group of techniques or technology." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocational_education).

Basically, vocational or technical schools have more of a hands on approach to schooling. While learning, the theory behind the career you will also learn how to do the job.

An example of a career that may require vocational training would be a chef. This is not just a line cook at the local diner but more of an upscale chef that you find in expensive restaurant. For this career you may enroll in the Le Cordon Bleu Institute of Culinary Arts. Here you will learn the skills necessary to run your own upscale kitchen or become a pastry chef by having lessons not in a traditional classroom but in a kitchen where an instructor would teach how to perform tasks and make certain dishes.

A few other careers that would require vocational training include: interior and fashion design, computer graphic design, computer networks, software technology, medical billing, and automotive technology.

There are some careers that provide specialized schooling. The education for these careers is a short but highly intense course- usually lasting only a few weeks. This is the case for truck drivers. Truck driving is not offered at vocational or other colleges. For this career, you will only have to attend a relatively short course that will typically teach you how to operate the vehicle and the other vehicle related items necessary to pass a written and driving test to obtain the commercial driver's license. Once you've successfully completed your education then you can expect to start out making $30,000.

Another career with specialized schooling is Real Estate. In as little as three weeks, you will learn all the aspects of selling a house and be prepared to take a state exam. Upon successfully passing the exam, you will be well on your way to earning a sizable income.

Finally, there is traditional higher education. When attending a college or university, you will spend considerable time learning theory and learning how to think critically. You will learn about the job but won't necessarily learn how to do the job. At least not with the same proficiency as someone with a technical background. The reason for this is that a technical background focuses teaching a process that will be performed using the learner's hands and traditional higher education focuses on teaching a process for problem solving using research and theory. For this reason, successful completion of school will not guarantee automatic success. For example, let's look at teaching. In this profession, the student will study subjects relating to what they want to teach, abstract learning theory which covers how people learn, and methodology classes which teach how lessons should be conducted and why. The final part of their education requires new teachers to complete student teaching. This experience varies greatly from school to school and from person to person. Some student teachers find their master teachers are reluctant to let the student teachers practice while other master teachers have no problem letting the newbie make mistakes. However, despite this, most new teachers find their first year of actual teaching to be very difficult and they will rate their performance as low. The reason for this is that, despite their vast knowledge of how to teach, teachers must learn to teach. Like every job, they must learn by doing. Other jobs, such as business managers sometimes face similar situations because the higher education system greatly prepares them with the theoretic knowledge for success but does not always allow time for practical application.

So when it comes to developing skills, the path you take can vary greatly from career to career. The key here is to get some sort of education past high school. This will allow for you to get the job you want.