College Education and Success

l.appell English C & L 1
03-04-2010

The importance of college education gets wide acceptance from all over the world. Once President Barrack Obama itself in his in speech in Macomb Community College in Warren made clear that, "by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world." This trend again emphasizes the role of education, especially college education in the success of an individual. Success is not merely the accumulation of wealth, but it is the fulfilling of our mind with knowledge. School education provides only the basics, but college education gives extensive training and information in all areas related to our life. A society can be civilized and advanced only when they provide higher education to maximum members. Therefore, college education has a crucial role in the success of an individual, because it give proper training in character formation, provide information about advanced studies in technologies and are very essential to get good job opportunities. First of all, college education has a prominent role in forming the character of individuals. Character formation is not simply means acquiring new manners and behaviors. It is basically the usage of the knowledge which we get from higher education for the welfare of the society where we are living. Stephan Burwood, the famous philosopher, explained about it in his famous article " Imitation, Indwelling and the Embodied Self". According to Burwood "with the best university education we cannot separate out teaching x from doing x. And this is also true for learning x and doing x. What I mean by doing x is employing the knowledge" (Burwood125). Here he stresses out the application of what we learned from the university education. Society gets benefit only through this application. He also tells about the changes in the attitude of the university students. He says that " The process of self-transformation by the student in higher education, with its personal and social dimensions, is neatly captured in Rome Harre's model of personal development as an 'identity project' " (Burwood126). He tells that the student's approach to personal and social issues gets a new direction. That approach gives them a new identity. These two comments are actually the two dimensions of character formation. University education changing the character of the student in a positive way and it encourages the students to use that knowledge for the whole society. Thus higher education prepare them to succeed in their life. Along with the character formation, college education is the only way to get information about the latest developments in technologies. As a part of this society we need to go along with the flow of the society. That means we should be capable to know the new developments and approaches in the society. Current society is fully based on Internet and other electronic media and the college level education offers a personal approach to learning rather than a group. This necessitates the society to rely more on interaction and collaboration. Larry Livingston tells about the teaching creativity in higher education. According to him " New technologies both enable and urge fresh approaches to creativity in the context of education. University level education offers a natural place to adjust pedagogical structures in favor of a more individual approach to learning that organizes the intellectual community into a new patters of interaction and time allocation " (Livingston59). He points out the need for creativity in education and college level education can only give it to the students. Again, Dorothy Harnish, who is working for the Occupational Research Group at the University of Georgia, tells about the importance of technical education and its current position in Arab countries. He says "The UGA project is helping to improve technical education for