Know-How Exchange : Branding

Dear faridincbhilai,

While I commend your aspirations, I agree with Phil: the BEST route is to be a lifelong learner, to improve your skills and put them to use for the benefit of other people: to be of value.

On what to I base my agreement with Phil?

On hard, hard knocks and as a result of having been on the receiving end of years of what I can only describe as nonsensical academic arrogance and B.S.

Having a Ph. D. means you learn more and more about less and less. But, to what end? For who's benefit? If your aim is to become an educator to further the educations of other, lesser life forms through your Ph. D. my best advice to you is simple.

Don't.

You'll be of far greater value to other people by learning through doing in the workplace. This might sound frightfully old-fashioned (I'm a late generation Baby Boomer), but trust me on this.

Classroom theory will only get you so far, but if the stuff you'll be learning and passing on is not based on real world experience, what's the use? You'll do and be of more harm than value.

Of the schools pumping out MBAs and Ph. Ds every year, how many of those newly minted people are ill-equipped and ill-prepared to perform
in the positions (and earn the high salaries) they believe are owed to them purely by virtue of the letters they have after their names? I don't know, but my gut feeling is that the number is alarmingly high.

Having an MBA or a Ph. D. proves its owner is book smart, but what it does not do is prove its owner is street smart.

In many cases, academic education proves only than you can afford the time, money, and luxury of getting it, and that you can pass tests and impress other academically educated people. This kind of education does NOT prove or make you better, smarter, faster, or fitter to perform in the real world than someone who might lack those credentials, but someone who has been working and producing results in the real world and therefore proved themselves as having commercial worth, value, and impact.

If you are set on your course, then please, go forward and claim what you believe to be rightfully yours.

I truly mean this because believe it or not it's NOT my intention here to belittle you or the academic system.

But what does tick me off is the huge gulf of ignorance, arrogance, and perception from both sides of the academic ravine of this "One side shall not impact the other!" of "We are right and you are wrong!" or of "We are immortal and you are mere plankton!".

I'm all in favour of life long learning, BUT, for it to work effectively, the barriers have got to come down and the focus has got to be on what's going to be of most use for the customer, for the client, and for the solution of the marketing problem at hand.

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA