Is Craft More Important Than Degree?

Is Craft More Important Than Degree? What’s your take on it? First of all, imagine you have been offered to give an interview in your dream company. Everything goes as planned. You give your best at the interview and so do others. As you are discussing the possible outcomes with other candidates, you are secretly hoping that it is you who gets selected.

The HR comes out with the company’s decision and there you are, waiting with bated breath. You know it in your heart that this job is yours, but alas! The one who got 85% gets away with your dream job. The HR lets you know that your academic credentials ‘weren’t enough’ to get you through.

All of us have faced this bitter reality. We lost our chances just because we didn’t have the required academic grades or marks.

But on hindsight, is degree really important than your craft? Sure, you have better knowledge about computers than the other engineers, but I would be lying if I said that craft is given more weight-age than academic degrees.

So why do we suffer from this degree syndrome? Why is it so important to get a degree when you have what it takes to enter the corporate world, even without it?

Pros of Getting a Degree

• Deepened knowledge base.
• Makes more sense out of what you want to pursue.
• Creates and enhances opportunities.
• Society respects you more.

Well, the last ‘pro’ is really the truth. The more degrees hang on your wall, the more you are treated like ‘The King’.

You might think that all the degree holders are the most intelligent beings in the world. Well, not entirely true. There was a study conducted in Northern parts of India, wherein all the PhD holders were asked to write their designations, that means, they were told to spell ‘PhD’ on a piece of paper.

Now you might think, that this is child’s play and anyone can spell it! Well, the sad news is, 90 to 95% of these ‘PhD Holders’ spelled their own designations wrong! Imagine the plight of these states! It sometimes feels like these degrees were given in charity!

But do not let this example lead you to think that there is no point in getting a degree. Being well educated never did any harm. It will only help you enhance your opportunities for a better tomorrow.

Our education makes us more aware of our rights and duties, not only towards our country, but also towards ourselves as people.

Education gives us the freedom to choose the life we want for ourselves. It gives us a life that millions of others can only dream of.

It gives a voice to the voiceless. There are numerous instances of people, especially girls, being deprived of the right to education and being married off early, thereby leaving them with no choice but to become a slave to their husbands and in-laws.

Is Craft More Important Than Degree?

Life really becomes a burden when you do not get the right to choose and when someone else makes the most important decisions of your life, for you, life becomes all the more hellish.

Hence, having a degree to your name means that you have a voice that cannot be tuned out. It means you are aware of your rights and duties as an individual and as a citizen. Do not let this article fool you into thinking that getting educated is something to be taken lightly.

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So back to the example mentioned above. Why did I just give the example of Ph.D. holders? Well, my point of citing that example was to let you know that great degrees do not ALWAYS guarantee that you are the master of your craft.

What really Craft is?

Craft is something that you are good at. And you know that you excel in that particular field. The craft requires talent. When you say that a carpenter is good in his craft, it means that he knows how amake furniture. He has knowledge about the right kind of wood that would be perfect for it. He is smart enough to use the right tools to make a beautiful piece of furniture.

Like I said through the example, holding a great degree does not always guarantee that you are good in that field. There are scores of people who just gulp down an entire book, vomit it out on exam papers and end up scoring the highest marks.

Let’s take another example to make this clearer. Remember Silencer from 3 Idiots? Sure he scored the best marks. He also landed a great job. But was he REALLY smart? Would you call him talented? Did he really have any talent at all, apart from mugging up? I don’t think so.

The reality is that it is only our craft that will get us through the toughest work situations in the corporate world. But the other, sadder reality is that our CV is just not enough to showcase our craft. All that it ever really shows is the number and kind of degrees we hold and the grades we get.

And that is all that companies across the world focus on. If you have the grades, you get the job.

In fact the competition is so cut- throat that students will go to the absolute extreme to get the highest possible marks. The reasons behind this pressure are many: peer pressure, family issues, expectations from family, overall pressure from society, the ‘log kya kahenge’ pressure and the list is endless.

And I think it would be wrong to blame them for feeling helpless when they don’t score well. I mean, imagine the kind of pressure playing on a student’s mind when (s)he knows that if (s)he doesn’t score well, no company would want him/her as their employee.

Imagine yourself as a company now. Would you take in an employee who has scored 60% or would you select the one who scored 90%? I think the answer is obvious.

Companies, over centuries now, are conditioned to believe that the person scoring the best marks is the best candidate for the company. The ones who don’t meet the company’s expectations are as good as gone.

Getting a degree is just one side of the coin. The other side of the coin shows an extremely contrasting reality.

Today, degrees and jobs share an inversely proportional relationship. The more degrees you have, lesser are the chances of getting a job!

Now that’s interesting, isn’t it? You might me thinking that why did I speak so much at length about getting a degree when I had to contradict my statement? But you see, the reality itself is contradicting.

A recent study revealed that the level of joblessness depends on your level of education. So does that mean that the more degrees you have, the more you are likely to be jobless? Well, unfortunately, there are various incidents supporting this.

Millions of people who held degrees of the likes of Ph.D degree holders, doctors, MBA graduates, had applied for the job for a sweeper’s job at the Municipal Corporation.

So where does that exactly leave us? Has the importance of degrees gone so low that we cannot find jobs anymore?

This is where entrepreneurship and the role of craft comes into play. Being an entrepreneur doesn’t necessarily require you to get the highest degrees. World leaders and tech tycoons did not hold fancy degrees to show off what they are made of.

These tycoons had the exact skills that were needed to become the giants that they are today. And all this started with becoming masters of what they are good at. They became masters of their craft! And life was never the same for them.

So how will entrepreneurship and getting degrees ever gel together? Well, while jobs require getting a degree, and when jobs aren’t available, it gives entrepreneurs the chance to create opportunities and bridges the gap in the job market.

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So, in my opinion, while education and degrees will never lose their importance given that they are the basis of survival for many of us, it wouldn’t be bad if the corporate world stuck its head out and looked beyond the figures in our CVs, figures meaning marks, and let our craft do the talking to secure a job or even start a successful business for that matter.

After reading this whole post, we believe that your take on Is Craft More Important Than Degree? might have undergone a change.