How to Advance Essay Writing and Academic Research to the Next Level?

The common wisdom is that one needs an academic degree to be successful in a remunerative profession. However, the common wisdom is sometimes more common than wise; sometimes, however, there is a grain of truth in what most people assume to be true. When, then, would an academic degree guarantee success in a professional life, and when would it not?

The times it would guarantee success are, in fact, few, and include professions such as physician and nurse. Indeed, one is denied entry to these professions without having an academic degree. The legal profession, these days, is also out of the question without a sheepskin; in the old days, one could become a lawyer via apprenticeship. If one defines entry to the profession as modest success, then it is indeed a guarantor of some level of success in such pursuits.

Most people believe that teaching requires an academic degree, but this is a bit more malleable than many think. After WWII, many people were hired to teach in UK schools without an academic degree as long as they had excelled in their subjects in the UK equivalent of high school. That was also once true, although a bit earlier than that, in the US. Many of those teachers who lacked academic degrees were very successful; some, doubtless, were not.

Indeed, one of the most successful teachers of literature at Harpur College, Binghamton, NY, lacked a degree, and he primarily taught classes in the very difficult literary figure, James Joyce. Word-of-mouth had it that he was just so devoted to the study of the works of James Joyce that few people on earth knew more than he. He convinced the chancellor to hire him, and made a long, vibrant career out of teaching at the university level without a degree of any sort beyond high school. It is possible that story is wholly or partly apocryphal. Still, more than one person in history has talked his or her way into the perfect profession without benefit of degree and made a stunning success of it.

Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, lacks a college degree, having dropped out of Harvard to begin a software company. Gates was wildly successful in business, and now has so much money that he gives away more than the national budget of some small nations. You can find out to the second how much money Gates makes by visiting one of the many Gates wealth clocks on the Internet. Of course, anointing Bill Gates as the prime example of a person who became a success lacking an academic degree assumes that wealth is the only measure of professional success. But success can be measured also in terms of service to others.

Mother Teresa, whose service to the poor of India was both legendary and effective, lacked an academic degree. Although she was Albanian, Mother Teresa had her early education at a rigorous convent school in Ireland, and took religious orders there as a young woman. Then, she went to India as a missionary, teaching children in English. By the mid-1940s, her emphasis had changed, and she left the convent to live among and help the poor, taking only a short medical course in Patna, India, before embarking on what would be her life's work, helping the sick and indigent in the poorest of India's slums. She became a global force for charity among those most desperately in need, and her name is still a household word to denote saintly behavior.

If one looks at just these two examples, it is clear that an academic degree is not always needed for professional success. However, few people have the foresight of a Bill Gates or the saintliness of a Mother Teresa.

If one does, then clearly, an academic degree is not needed. If one doesn't, then it is probably reasonable to accept the common wisdom and get an academic degree in one's field of interest. If one later develops Gatesian foresight or Mother Teresa-like saintliness, one can still become a blazing star in human history, with the added attraction of some academic credentials, never a bad thing to have.