Ever wondered about the true strength and value of your university degree in comparison with others? How a valuable degree will help you in the job market and how far can it take you?
With the help of QS World Rankings, we can broadly rank your university and find out its strengths. But most importantly, we can estimate how powerful our degrees will be on a global or domestic market.
What is the true value of a college degree?
You can also check how strong the courses are based on their rankings. For example, if you study Medicine, you can filter everything down and search for your university. You can also filter it by continent or country to see how well your university, college, or business school is doing on a national scale. What determines the strength of an educational institution.
This does not include face-value based on tuition fees but from an academic perspective. Of course, money is a strong factor in the research and credibility of hiring the best teachers. But for now, we wish to focus solely on six factors to justify a valuable degree:
- academic reputation,
- employer reputation,
- faculty-student,
- citations per faculty,
- international faculty,
- number of international students
How to measure the value of your degree?
In order to get started, you need to narrow down your search to a certain field you are in. You can even narrow it down further to continent or country and type of degree (Msc., Bsc. Mphil., MBA, etc.) This way if you are looking to do your studies, you can make an estimation on the true value of a degree from a specific university or college.
It is important to note that rankings don’t necessarily mean that a university with weaker rankings deserves no credit or that you will get a less valuable degree. These rankings are a guide to attract students, researchers, teachers, investors, and companies. But they cannot estimate knowledge or a student’s capabilities. Therefore there is no reason to feel worn down if you are not in UCL, Oxford, École Polytechnique, or Heidelberg.
Remarkable inventors, celebrities, laureates, and millionaires come from many lesser-known universities. Rankings are there to attract. At the end of the day, work experience and connections will beat rankings. There is no doubt that an Ivy League degree is noteworthy. But work experience and connections play a bigger role in your career than the paper you would receive. Wherever you study, make the most of it.
How to boost your degree’s value?
Go to student unions, join study clubs, apply for jobs (even voluntary) and fill up your resume with meaningful experience. If you do that, a degree from a top university will be just a minor recommendation by employers.
At the end of the day, it is practical and soft skills that will determine who will hire you. Therefore, the most important thing is to focus on yourself and the skills that you can use in theory and practice.
Conclusion – Why is your degree value so important?
If you look at some of the top universities as mentioned before you can see that most of them host a group of elites. Tuition fees have sky-rocketed meanwhile the courses, books and education leave you with similar if not the same knowledge. This is something you need to weigh in before starting your studies.
Is your money going the right places? Will your degree pay off in the job market? These are difficult questions for students since they haven’t had a taste of real-life challenges, thus making the answer very difficult. Many of them fall into a trap of debt, which they struggle with for decades. However, the value and reputation of a strong course in a good university might alleviate that problem and land you a well paying job.
