I have an M.A. in Organizational Leadership. I also have my Project Management Professional (PMP) certification. Add to that two Scrum Alliance certifications, an ITIL Foundations certificate, and a Six Sigma Green Belt and you've got a ton of letters trailing after my name in my email signature.
If I'm being totally honest... I don't really care about any of them.
The only thing they prove is that I'm a "master instruction follower".
I had to follow a list of instructions to get everything listed above. For my Master's degree, it was going through a series of classes and completing homework assignments. For my PMP, I had to take a super long multiple-choice test. Heck, for my Scrum Alliance certifications, all I had to do was sit in a class for two days.
I'm not saying that the information garnered from each of those things is devoid of any value, but there is a great danger in a degree or certification. It creates the great problem of assumption in standardization. In other words, it assumes that Person A with a PMP is just as good in project management as Person B with PMP. I think it goes without saying that that is not definitely not the case.
That's the danger of a degree or certification. The majority of people seek the paper, not the education. And if you think kids are the only ones that try to cheat their way through school, guess again. In both Scrum Alliance certification classes, there were students in the class that definitely rode the coattails of people around them.
Just. Because. They wanted. The paper.
And for better or worse, I totally understand where the thought is coming from: people still look at them as being valuable! You pretty much can't get any decent job without a bachelor's degree even though everybody and their brother has a bachelor's degree these days. If you want proof of that, just go to a Starbucks and ask how many of the baristas have a college degree.
Don't get me wrong, this post isn't to put down anybody but rather to illustrate a point: the education system as we know it is broken. The public school system is churning out "well-rounded" people who are good at following instructions, and that thought carries into college degrees and certifications.
But really, the paper is not what matters. It's the application of the education in real life.
I hope you read that closely because I don't want you to think that I'm down on education as a whole. Are college degree programs bloated with useless information? Sure, but I also learned some really valuable stuff from 3 or 4 of my courses in undergrad. (The sad part is that I took something like 40 courses across my undergrad degree, so the fact that I only found roughly 10% of them to be valuable is a sad marker.) If I thought education was wholly useless, I wouldn't be seeking a second potential Master's degree, which is exactly what I'm doing.
Anyway, I really hope you take something away from this post. Education can be great, but don't do it just for the piece of paper at the end of the road. Even though I don't value my own education that much, there are still parts of it that I found extremely helpful. For example, even though it may sound like I'm bashing the Scrum Alliance certifications, I loved those courses and found them to be super fruitful. It just makes me sad and disappointed that there were folks in there clearly just for the paper.
If you found this post interesting, check out the book Linchpin by Seth Godin. I know, I know, I recommend his stuff all the time, but that book is seriously enlightening. It'll give you a whole new perspective on things. For the better.
If I'm being totally honest... I don't really care about any of them.
The only thing they prove is that I'm a "master instruction follower".
I had to follow a list of instructions to get everything listed above. For my Master's degree, it was going through a series of classes and completing homework assignments. For my PMP, I had to take a super long multiple-choice test. Heck, for my Scrum Alliance certifications, all I had to do was sit in a class for two days.
I'm not saying that the information garnered from each of those things is devoid of any value, but there is a great danger in a degree or certification. It creates the great problem of assumption in standardization. In other words, it assumes that Person A with a PMP is just as good in project management as Person B with PMP. I think it goes without saying that that is not definitely not the case.
That's the danger of a degree or certification. The majority of people seek the paper, not the education. And if you think kids are the only ones that try to cheat their way through school, guess again. In both Scrum Alliance certification classes, there were students in the class that definitely rode the coattails of people around them.
Just. Because. They wanted. The paper.
And for better or worse, I totally understand where the thought is coming from: people still look at them as being valuable! You pretty much can't get any decent job without a bachelor's degree even though everybody and their brother has a bachelor's degree these days. If you want proof of that, just go to a Starbucks and ask how many of the baristas have a college degree.
Don't get me wrong, this post isn't to put down anybody but rather to illustrate a point: the education system as we know it is broken. The public school system is churning out "well-rounded" people who are good at following instructions, and that thought carries into college degrees and certifications.
But really, the paper is not what matters. It's the application of the education in real life.
I hope you read that closely because I don't want you to think that I'm down on education as a whole. Are college degree programs bloated with useless information? Sure, but I also learned some really valuable stuff from 3 or 4 of my courses in undergrad. (The sad part is that I took something like 40 courses across my undergrad degree, so the fact that I only found roughly 10% of them to be valuable is a sad marker.) If I thought education was wholly useless, I wouldn't be seeking a second potential Master's degree, which is exactly what I'm doing.
Anyway, I really hope you take something away from this post. Education can be great, but don't do it just for the piece of paper at the end of the road. Even though I don't value my own education that much, there are still parts of it that I found extremely helpful. For example, even though it may sound like I'm bashing the Scrum Alliance certifications, I loved those courses and found them to be super fruitful. It just makes me sad and disappointed that there were folks in there clearly just for the paper.
If you found this post interesting, check out the book Linchpin by Seth Godin. I know, I know, I recommend his stuff all the time, but that book is seriously enlightening. It'll give you a whole new perspective on things. For the better.
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