Matthew Lillig Source 5

Step 1:

A) BIGDA, CAROLYN. "How To Get A Job In Today's Market." Kiplinger's Personal Finance 69.6 (2015): 11-12. Business Source Premier. Web. 14 Oct. 2016.

B) Why is it important to understand how future employers value applied skills versus knowledge gained through higher education?

C) BEFORE: I chose this article because I was hoping to relate my question about what job interviewers look for in applicants and whether they value applied skills or knowledge gained from a college education. I am hoping to gain from this article a better understanding of what is important in the current job market and if a college education is even valuable to people trying to get high-paying jobs. DURING: People who didn’t go to an ivy league school, but had the aspiration and drive to apply to one, make as much as those who actually went to an elite school. Basically, if you have the aspiration and drive, it contributes more to your success than where you got your degree. A lot of people attend these elite schools just because they hope to make use of the networks, but most of those evaporate by the time you’re in your 30s--by then, nobody is asking where you went to school. The article also encourages students to try to go to schools with diverse socioeconomic representation.

Step 2:

P1 Summarize:

The article begins by explaining how today’s job market is growing increasingly reliant on technology, and this means applicants need to reform their approach. It then goes on to describe multiple apps, like Monster, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and how these social media platforms are how many employers find employees who may not even be looking for a job. Bigda advises job applicants to “make sure your online profiles are up to date, comprehensive and professional,” because that way you are on employers radar even before you send in an application. She also cites a source about how people who attended ivy league schools earn an average of 7% more over their lifetime than people who didn’t, but this earnings differential evaporates when compared to students who had the drive to apply to exclusive schools but choose to go to less-exclusive universities. She goes on to encourage students to choose a college not based on rank but based on the diversity of the campus because that reflects the diversity of society, but that if we are privileged enough to be on a college campus, we shouldn’t take that for granted.

P2 Think:

This is important to my overall approach to the topic because it draws on other values that come from college, which is whether or not college is worth going to and to what extent. Although this article seems to be against higher education in reality it is for, but with some stipulations. It made note that it doesn’t really matter what college you go to but rather the drive you have when at the colleges and outside. This plays an important factor into why people should or should not go to college. If it doesn’t really matter that much whether or not you go to an ivy league school or not why are people shoveling out money to go there just so they have “Harvard” or “Yale” on their resume. This continues to play into the growing cost of education as people are prioritizing the idea of a school that is hard to get into and in turn the price goes up. In other words restrictive schools have less students, less students means less money, so make up for it the cost of tuition goes up per student.

P3 Synthesize:

This article can be synthesized against article one, where article one says that general summary is that people who attend higher education make 13% more, this can be supported by what article 5 says when they arge that in general going to an Ivy league school doesn’t support you annual income but rather the drive that got you to the ivy league school will. They in turn say that if you are going to go to college you need to look for a school that will match the diversity you will face outside of the workforce because that is what the environment will be like in the real world. This article also brings up a good point when it mentions that sometimes your online profile is more important than the information you learned in school, with the modern age in technology people are one click away from learning everything they need to know about you, and with this it is really important to understand to keep that information relevant and up to date.

P4 Questions/Plan:

At this point I need to retract and find out more of people's opinions on how to reform education to draw the most value out of it. I have noticed at this point that there really isn't scholarly articles out that say that higher education has little or no value anymore but there is enough information out there that says that higher education needs to be reformed and the value of it is declining. I need to find an article that talks about reform. What can be changed to draw the most value out of education? On the university level? On the student level? What can we do to create change? What is logically possible without mass reform?