Success is Better Measured by One's Financial Attainment - Essay Example

A smaller number of working professionals also struggle to attend graduate school and take postgraduate courses. However, because of several social economic and demographic reasons, not everyone can be in the profession of their choice. Thus, only a few can manage or afford to choose, and they inevitably pick such and like careers. Success can only be effectively evaluated by a person’s financial attainment. The one thing that most of the high-end jobs have in common is that the paychecks are much larger than what the people in lower jobs, like teachers, nurses, firefighters and police officers make.

From this, we can conclude that the majority choose the jobs, not because of how fulfilling they are but how much money they earn. Bearing in mind that the society is aware of the distinction, it is evident that most of these professions are the ones who live in the best houses, drive nice cars and take their children to the high cost private schools. Society, in general, has the propensity to admire and praise those who seem to achieve notwithstanding how they got the success. Therefore, the financial attainment of an individual is a better and more suitable measurement for success than the education level.

Take Bill Gates, for instance: he dropped out of Harvard without his degree and left school because he had problems with the administration for doing business in the dorm room (Times magazine, 2007). As such, his level of education at the time he was starting Microsoft, the company that made him one of the world’s wealthiest and most influential men, were the same as those of any college drop outs. However, he is not known or revered for his academic credentials of lack of them for that matter.

He is known for his phenomenal wealth, and whether he made it with or without a college degree is beside the point since he is easily one of the most successful men in the world. While it may have to do with his contribution to technology, it is worth noting that he did not achieve the feat alone yet many of his co-founders who are not as wealthy are hardly known as popular as him. Similarly, several of the greatest financial successes of the current times, including Paul Ellen, co-founder of Microsoft, the late Steve Jobs and Richard Branson, never finished schools, and they became some of the worlds fanatical giants (Carney 2009).

While their success is undeniable, measuring it based on academic attainment would be impractical. Success is best measured by financial achievement since the people who have the most influence in the world are not the most educated, but the ones who wealthy financially. In order to enhance this, assume one is a professor with 10 degrees and someone else is a billionaire and a school dropout. One is limited to what he/she can achieve alone, since, without the money, one cannot reach very many people with your education.

However, the dropout with money can use it to pay people with more education, hence, he is more successful in that endeavor. If success represents the achievements of a person’s set objectives, let us hypothetically visit students in class and inquire them, “What is your intention for being in class?” - “To get a degree”. If yes, does it mean that when they get the degree they have achieved their intention? We do not stop there, we ask further: “What do you intend to do with your degree?

” - “To get a well paying job, so I can start a family”