As a veteran – okay an older veteran – I have been in a lot of bull sessions within the military brotherhood and sisterhood about what was and what is going to be. Since I have been an academic (professor twice: once as an electrical engineer and once as military science – aka Army ROTC, and then for a dozen years as a research liaison to the Fort) most of those conversations eventually end up in the “get a degree to get a job I want” zone.
It has been a debatable point with me if a degree is worth it. Veterans, my friends, get an advanced degree but end up doing work that needed all the prep work about any associates degree would have given them. Then they throw on a few certifications: PMP, Certified Financial Advisor, whatever … and get their real job prep from the employer anyway. So is education the way to prepare yourself for success?
My unsurprising answer is YES that education does prepare a veteran for civilian success. Here is my logic.
Point 1. Just like in the armed services creditability is a key – the degree becomes the main credential and it matters in this order: employers, reviewers, probably your grandmother, but for sure your harshest critic – yourself. What level of degree (master, bachelor, associate)? What school (is it somewhere with name recognition)? And finally what discipline (and again is the discipline something that rings familiar)? A Master’s degree from Missouri S&T in engineering has high credibility. A doctor degree from Nazarene Theological Seminary in theological and ministerial studies may have low credibility in a commercial sense. That credibility is really not the diploma, but rather the confidence of knowing the industry terms, protocols for IT, science, communication, etc. that make one comfortable in a field of application. You feel like you are ready to be in a meeting with other engineers (or whatever you have chosen).
Point 2. It matters what you think success is. Veterans, and other late-to-college students, have a more refined idea of what success means to them. It may not matter to them the commercial value of the degree (point 1) but rather a moral value. So a veteran better prepares himself for success by having acted in the admissions process of choosing a pathway. Without the conscious – sometimes agonizing – choice of defining a personal pathway and choosing an image of success, the veteran tends to jump into the best job open at the time.
Point 3. Armed service was different than the day-to-day world of the American citizen. The veteran needs to adjust and to drop the burden of experience and ego. (By the way this part is a lot harder for the officers than the enlisted and the longer and higher they served the harder it is for them to get over themselves.) Education prepares you for success because it is a slow steady pace, a time of reflection and personal experimentation, and for the veteran a time for adjustment. At Missouri S&T we think of three phases: Red – the determining of your college and degree program, admissions and getting settled in; White – the grinding through the course and the administrative (VA and university) hurdles while preserving your values and refining your self-conception; Blue – the moving on to a career and family life. You are prepared for success not just in getting a job, but in how to handle the success, the money, the responsibilities, and the leadership without becoming an unhappy jerk.
Preparing for success – YES good idea. Getting an education to prepare – YES again.
by Steve Tupper, July 2016