Back to School and Go to Work

The articles illustrate the advantages and disadvantages of going back to school and work after a certain age. In the article, Collamer (2013) discusses the opportunities of going back to school after working life. The author discusses the ways to select a Back-to-School program, which is suitable for an individual of a certain age. Grant (2011) defines the advantages of working life after achieving a college degree. He explains the effectiveness of achieving school degrees after working life. In the third article, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment gives information about the benefit of work-life balance. The article defines the advantages of working life in an individual’s life. Also, it shows the benefits of working and creating own business to improve someone’s lifestyle.

Back to School and Go to Work Analysis

Schooling is one of the important parts of life during one’s childhood, which teaches children different ways to improve their personality. Schools teach children to develop their skills in specific fields. Thus, children manage to find their goals in life and choose their future profession by studying in school.

School life is quite similar to working life in some aspects. In both cases, individuals are responsible for their precise activities. Both schools and workplaces have some schedules or routines of work, which an individual should follow to achieve fruitful results. A child and an employee must leave their house in a definite time in the morning for their activities, and they must follow the timetable of the institution or organization during their studying period or working period in the respective places. Some of the workplaces and schools have their own strict ethics and discipline, which pupils or employees must follow. In some countries, schools and workplaces have their own uniform, which shows the identity of a person.

However, school and working lives have some differences. In schools, children learn to improve their personal ethics, for instance behavior and general responsibilities. Nevertheless, in workplace people need to apply their personal ethics. Usually, the term “work” is related to adults and school is related to children, yet some of the experts say that, if children start working at the age 15, then he or she is learning to be an adult. At work people get salary or wages for their performance, but in school children earn scores and scholarships for their good performance (Collamer, 2013).

Nevertheless, some of the Americans believe that, it is possible to restart schooling at the age of 50 and 60 to improve one’s career prospects. People believe that education does not have age barriers. Nonetheless, employment and working process have certain age limits. People cannot work officially in most of the workplaces after a definite age, but they can continue their studies at any age. Nowadays, government organizations and NGOs organize different Back-to-School programs for elderly people, which help retired people to increase their knowledge in a specific field. However, the current unemployment is a burning problem in the society between the school and college graduate. The choice of a college major shows chances of unemployment in future professions. For instance, Georgetown University Center on Workplace and Education found that roughly 5 percent of unemployment has been seen in education and nursing majors, whereas unemployment rate of 10 percent has been recorded in information system and architecture. So, students should be careful with their choices of studies during their childhood in order to get a good job in future. Still, it is remarkable that in some of the professions people can continue their studies in their 40s or 50s in order to get a higher position in the respective field. For example, health care organizations tend to be more welcoming to the employees who are over 40 (Collamer, 2013).

Going back to school can be a good decision for a person if it is his or her personal decision instead of someone’s pressure. Sometimes some students are unsuccessful for the first couple of semesters due to their personal mistakes. In such situations, it is a good chance for students or working people to rejoin institutions to improve their poor grades. However, if an individual is not interested by himself to go back to school, then it is not a good idea to do so. Going back to school is not a good idea if a person does it solely to get a job, because earning a degree is linked to better employment rate, but life is not only about receiving paycheck, people should enjoy what they do and it is also vital to one’s health and happiness (Grant, 2011).

On the other hand, working life has specific advantages, too. The most remarkable advantage is that work teaches people to live an independent life. By working, people can earn and save money for future plans. Working life teaches people to live a responsible life. Working life experience teaches people to deal with multiple responsibilities including work, home, and community. People can achieve a good quality of life by working for a reputed organization on a regular basis. People can gather money for their future plans including travelling, health care, buying properties etc. However, by going back to school an individual cannot have the possibilities to earn a living for his or her family. Sometimes some individuals prefer to go back to school after retirement. In such situations, they can boost their knowledge in certain topics, but their income level is not increasing by going back to school. Still, if they try to do some other work, which is meant for pensioners, then they can earn their living in a more effective way. Also, working life has possibilities to perform voluntary work and donations for the poor communities if an individual can earn more than enough for his or her family (Ministry of Business, n.d.)

So, from the above discussion, we can come to the conclusion that going back to school and work has different advantages and disadvantages. However, if someone wants to improve his or her knowledge and wants to achieve some information in a specific field, then he or she can try to achieve it at any age because education does not have any age limit. However, if an individual wants to earn more money in his life and wants to improve productivity, then going to work is a better option instead of school.