Many of the trends of the future will have a big impact on children's education and their future career prospects. So, what can we do to prepare them? Here, I'm going to help you dispel three myths and give you two more suggestions.
Myth 1: Elite schools provide the best education
The first myth is that prestigious schools provide the best education.
Let's start with one of the most famous studies in the economics of education. Alan Kruger, who once chaired Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, and his collaborator Doyle discuss the differences between students from elite and regular schools when they graduate. They found that, on average, students at elite schools earn 7% more than students at regular schools. This conclusion is not surprising, students from elite schools are generally more capable, and their performance in the workplace is certainly more impressive. But the most interesting conclusion of their study is that it doesn't matter if you are a good student, you don't go to a prestigious school. They went to see a group of students who did well in exams and got admission letters from prestigious schools, but instead of going to prestigious schools, they went to relatively more ordinary schools. For example, students who can go to Harvard go to North Carolina State University, and as a result, such students perform better in the workplace than students who go to elite schools.
So why do students still have to squeeze their heads into prestigious schools? One reason is that they do see that students from elite schools have an advantage when it comes to finding a job. The first round of recruitment is to spell your resume, and the school you graduated from is not well-known, and you won't even have the opportunity to interview. However, this is due to the drawbacks of the current recruitment system. Most of the people in charge of recruitment are the personnel department, and it is the boss who really wants to hire people. This raises the issue of risk aversion. Elite schools have good students and bad students. Ordinary schools have good students and bad students. It is impossible for the personnel department to see everyone accurately, and he may make two kinds of mistakes: he treats a bad student from a prestigious school as a good student, or a good student from an ordinary school as a bad student. The first mistake is less risky for him. He can tell the boss, that's no way, my Peking University and Tsinghua students have recruited you for it, and it's not easy to do it, so I can't help it. But the risk of the second mistake is too great. The boss will wonder if he has a good eye at all. Out of the consideration of risk aversion, the personnel department will rather recruit poor students from prestigious schools than excellent students from ordinary schools. However, as I'll talk about later, if you have the initiative, you can avoid this hurdle.
Even when it comes to graduation recruitment, students from prestigious schools have a certain advantage, but when it comes to changing jobs, this advantage is greatly reduced. When changing jobs, recruiters pay more attention to your past performance than how many points you scored in the college entrance examination that year. Similarly, when laying off employees, the employer will not open up just because you graduated from a prestigious school. Therefore, although a prestigious school has an aura, this aura can only be used once.
So, my advice is: if you can get into a prestigious school, then, congratulations, you have proven yourself. If you can't get into a prestigious school, it's best to find a school that matches you. The so-called matching with yourself means that you can mix up to the upper middle level in school with a little effort. Even if you fail the college entrance examination and the university you go to is not ideal, it doesn't matter, what school you go to does not determine the end of your life, it is just a check-in point in your life.
Myth 2: The most popular majors are the best ones
Now let's talk about the second myth. The second myth is that the hottest majors are the best majors.
Parents and teachers often tell their children that you should think about what you want to do in the future and find a good major. Someone will tell you to let your child learn finance and computers. Some people will tell you, don't study journalism, don't study civil engineering. Many parents are very disappointed in their children, why is he not too young, and he has not yet found a purpose in life.
Let's face it: most children don't find their purpose in life when it's time to go to college. They are not to blame. Their limited life experience is to brush up on ten years of questions, what life goals can you let him brush up? If you don't have a goal in life, what should you do if you choose the wrong major when you choose a major?
Professionalism really isn't that important. Most of them work in a job that doesn't matter what they studied. In the future, people may have to change several jobs in their lives, and it is impossible for each job to be the major they originally studied. Not to mention, the future of work will be beyond our imagination, you just want to learn, and there is no such major now. Some majors, such as accounting and engineering, have a higher probability of working in their major after graduation, but even if they do these jobs, they will be promoted to management positions to a certain extent, and they will still change majors.
The profession that seems hot now may not be popular in the future. This is because the economic situation is changing too fast and there is a lag effect in education. You see that a certain industry is very popular right now, so you decide to study that major, but you have to study for four years in college. Four years later, when you graduate, the ** period of that industry may have passed, and you just have one foot in the air.
Similarly, majors that you find useless are likely to be more useful than you think. Let's talk about journalism, it is really difficult to find a job after graduating from this major, even if you find a job, the income of being a reporter is not high, and it is very tiring to work. But who says you have to be a journalist to study journalism? Who says you have to work as a journalist for a lifetime? Each profession contains a number of unique skills. For example, journalism can teach you how to learn new knowledge quickly, be exposed to different aspects of society, and exercise your presentation skills, which are all core skills in career development.
So, my advice is: allow your child to make mistakes. If you learn the wrong major, you can change it again, but if you don't figure it out, you can major or minor, and study two majors. I really don't know what major to choose, so I choose the most basic major. For example, instead of learning artificial intelligence, it is better to study statistics; Instead of learning e-commerce, it is better to study philosophy. The most basic major will train you in your core skills. As for the knowledge to be used in the work, learning on the job is the most effective.
Myth 3: The most stable job is the best job
The third myth is that the most stable job is the best job.
In the past two years, the economic situation has not been good, and it is difficult to find a job, so everyone thinks that it is better to find a stable job. But what exactly is a stable job? Is being a civil servant in the system a stable job? Not necessarily. If you look at the history of reform in the past, you will find that ** institutions also adjust frequently. New functions will be added, but some old ones will also be eliminated. Moreover, we have always emphasized the need to streamline the administration of the army, and every once in a while, we will eliminate redundant personnel in the organization. Therefore, civil servants are not iron rice bowls.
There are also some career editors in the system, such as teachers and doctors. It depends on how the situation changes. The decline in fertility is already affecting enrolment in kindergartens and primary schools, and in a few years, in secondary schools. When there are fewer students, there will be some compression of teachers.
If you don't enter the system, then what about entering a large company? The once most prosperous industries, real estate, Internet, and finance, have recruited a large number of employees, but the economic situation is not good, and they have been busy optimizing in the past two years. Therefore, large enterprises are not necessarily reliable.
The experience of the previous generation does not apply to the next. If parents only know how to give their children ideas: let's go to graduate school and take the civil service exam, it is actually binding the child's hands and feet and blocking the child's sight.
The growth cycle of the younger generation has become longer than before. During the Industrial Revolution, teenage children were already in factories, so there was no such thing as adolescence. Nowadays, the growth of children is not only an adolescence, but also an "adult internship period". More and more young people will change jobs after graduating from college, and they may go back to school to study in the middle, and they will not really settle down until they are 30 years old. Confucius said, "Thirty and standing", which proves that he has great foresight. From graduating from college to actually settling in, is this internship period a waste of time? Not. This is what young people are learning about really useful knowledge, that is, knowledge of surviving in the real world.
Another change is that many career paths have been opened. Occupations that used to be able to go up only halfway up the mountain, but now they can reach the top of the mountain. For example, the profession of chef used to be halfway up the mountain, and if you can become a chef in a restaurant, you will come to an end. Now it's different, a chef can start his own business, he can open a Michelin-starred restaurant, he can open a chain restaurant. Chefs can also become stars. The hottest influencers on the Internet are not economists, but food bloggers, and their influence has been amplified all of a sudden.
What does this teach us? Since there are more ways up the mountain than before, it doesn't matter which way you go, it's important to get to the top. In other words, it doesn't matter what line of work you do, but whatever you do, you have to be at the top of the industry. Elites from all walks of life will meet on the top of the mountain. For example, the probability that a third-rate actor can meet a first-class actor is very small, but the probability that a first-rate makeup artist can meet a first-class actor is very high, and they can even become good friends. The probability that third-rate entrepreneurs can meet first-class entrepreneurs is also very small, but first-class coaches can meet first-class entrepreneurs, because entrepreneurs also need to have coaches to guide them to exercise.
If everyone goes to graduate school or civil service, or everyone goes to a major Internet company or financial institution, it is like when climbing a mountain, everyone walks on one path, which is crowded, not only can not go up, but also easy to get into danger. However, there is obviously more than one way up the mountain. With a slight turn, there is another way up the mountain, which has better scenery and reaches the summit earlier.
So, my advice is: treat every job as an internship opportunity, use every platform, improve your abilities, and prepare for the day when you too can survive on your own in the wilderness without being attached to any one platform.
Two suggestions
With these three myths out of the way, I'll give you two more suggestions.
The first piece of advice is to expose children to the real world as early as possible. If parents put too much energy into letting their children brush up on questions, take exams, and prepare for prestigious schools, they will ignore the abilities that are really important for their children's lifelong growth. Even if a child's grades are good, if they don't know how to communicate with others, establish intimate relationships, and lead a team, there is no way to have a successful life, and even some children will become anxious, depressed, and tired of school. How can we expose our children to the real world? Children can learn to do housework and take on their own responsibilities; Let the child do odd jobs and experience the hard work of labor; You can let your child communicate with adults on an equal footing, and find him a life coach and a role model around him. In this way, the child can be physically and mentally healthy.
The second suggestion is: the chicken baby is not as good as the chicken itself. Your experience will affect your child's experience, and your vision will determine your child's vision. As we mentioned earlier, a child may not have a purpose in life, and that is because he does not have the opportunity to be exposed to different industries, especially successful people in various industries. Can you give him such an opportunity? If you are better and more willing to learn about new things, you can give your child more opportunities. If a young man can get in touch with the masters in the industry, he will know more about the internal information of the industry, and then he will find that not all recruits have to pass the level of submitting resumes and passing the human resources manager. With a guide, it will be easier for young people to enter the workforce.
Children are growing, and so are parents. When it comes to lifelong learning, parents and children are classmates.
If you are a parent, I hope you can read this article with your children and discuss it together. What experience do children have, what experience do you have, welcome to leave a message in the message area and share it with you.