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Education equals Experience

We often hear the concerns of corporate CEOs that the personnel entering the workforce from our education systems are ill prepared to fulfill their work assignments. Indeed, this issue has been cited as one of the reasons behind the efforts to restructure the U.S. system of education. University Chancellors argue that the current system educates, but does not and can not train people for the myriad of jobs. Yet, new-technology development companies are inclined to hire the highest level of degreed personnel in order to obtain and utilize the latest knowledge and they forgo hiring experienced people. Some companies have even instituted point systems in an attempt to equate levels of knowledge to levels of experience, but company management continues to be frustrated with the organization's slow progress.

It is helpful to highlight the difference between education and experience.

Education and training are the formal means for the accumulation of knowledge. Success in these depends on an individual's finances, motivation level, intelligence, and learning skills. Grade Point Averages, courses completed, and degree level are measurements of education achievement.

Experience is the cumulative participation in the application of knowledge, and success depends on an individual's creativity, problem solving, and physical skills. The number and complexity of projects successfully completed best measure experience achievement.

People who excel at acquiring education and training may not be adept at applying it. On the other hand, very experienced people may have lacked access to higher education or may not be as educationally competent. Both highly educated and very experienced people have spent many years in acquiring their specific skills. The time, effort, and personal talents required to achieve either high education or experience make it rare to find people who have both.

Successful innovation requires a team composed of talented people. The more difficult the technical challenge, the more important it is to have both highly educated and very experienced team members. We have been involved with many projects where initial failure to have both educated and experienced personnel on the project has totally stopped progress. In every case, the addition of experience to the talented, educated, and trained in-house personnel has ignited team activity and resulted in forward progress.