The Value of Higher Education in Today’s Society

In today’s world higher education is very important for every person. It is not only the high status for employers, family, friends and society in general. This is also an opportunity for human development as a professional, as a person, and in the end, as a unit of social advancement of society. Transformation of the whole socio-economic structure of society over the last decades has led to, first of all, changes in the scope of management. New situation dictated specific requirements for management personnel. As a result their social status and role have changed dramatically. Managers formed a separate social stratum that is actively growing, is becoming increasingly important and professionalized. Importance of higher education is obvious and understood today by almost every sane person. It allows a person to get a lot of privileges in society. An educated person is always more desirable to the new workplace. This suggests that the presence of higher education pays great attention when hiring a new employee. Moreover, at all times, people with higher education had high esteem in society than those who did not have such. This trend continues today.

Higher Education and the Market

Good career is a dream of everyone. Climbing the corporate ladder in a nice, well-known company to take a senior post is prestigious and ultimately profitable. The person, who made such a successful career, gets a high status in society, trust and respect of others, as well as a comfortable living to old age. However, all this is hard to achieve without higher education.

Higher education can give a person the knowledge and skills that he or she will be able to apply for work in the future. They will help make a brilliant career, which eventually will become a major lifework. After all, the purpose of higher education is to educate every person in a certain area. The entire educational process is dedicated to it and professional practice allows assigning the knowledge and for the first time to apply the skills. All this suggests that higher education is an integral part of everyone’s life, who wants to live a full, self-sufficient life without feelings of frustration and undervalue.

Thus, every modern man is given every opportunity to get a quality education. The main thing here is the desire to learn a profession and become a real expert in it.

In general, I believe, the professionalization of management through the higher education can be considered in the broad and narrow sense. In the first case, higher education is an understanding, the creation and development of rules and regulations, which are associated with the formation of the occupational structure, with the growth of general requirements for the manager specialty. In a narrower sense, on an individual level it is a person’s willingness and suitability to carry out this professional role. Thus, training future managers is the process due to qualitative and quantitative changes in the content and nature of managerial work. This process is accompanied by the emergence of the manager profession and various managerial disciplines (sales manager, manager of tourism, personnel manager, etc.) professional culture (traditions, dress, language, etiquette) technologies enable human professional activity, formation and its development as a professional.

Thus, managerial work becomes a professional, first, as a result of qualitative changes of job functions due to the needs of society, as well as educational conditions. Secondly, due to the human ability to acquire such knowledge and skills that will enable him/her competently, professionally perform their functions. Here a formation of training system of managers becomes paramount, and in fact, high-quality of higher education. Special management education legitimizes power of managers at an enterprise; it helps to acquire the relative advantages with respect to other social groups by improving social status of managers.

Today, one of the leading communicative skills of almost any specialist working in the system of subject-subject relations is teamwork skills. I, as a future professional, want to draw attention to the following key skills and abilities.

A successful manager must:

• Easily make contact with other people and use interpersonal skills to achieve goals;
• Propose own ideas for solving the problem;
• Take an interest in the point of view of team members;
• Help the group to achieve results;
• Strive for consensus;
• Have own interactive skills;
• Be prepared to actively support team processes;
• Voluntarily renounce the use of own advantages in favor of the team;
• Maintain favorable atmosphere and climate in the team for creativity and cooperation;

In the event of a conflict seek to resolve it, etc.

All listed above is my vision of what I got to develop further at workplace

Team and teamwork became somewhat a cult phenomenon in modern management (Rolfsen, 2013). There are several reasons for this. First, teamwork demonstrates the high quality and efficiency in solving many organizational problems. Secondly, team mobilizes human and increases a person’s satisfaction with the conditions of life.

Team is a small group of people united by a common purpose with complementary skills, a high level of mutual trust, understanding and respect. The most significant factors in effective teamwork are functional identification, management of mutual dependence, management conditions for the existence of differences, the degree of closeness of control commands from outside influence, timely diagnosis and resolution of conflicts and creating conditions for constant communication group members.

Aggregate of benefits of teamwork makes it an attractive target management. Thus, the team creates an atmosphere of community, communion, care and support, which is an important factor in individual readiness to additional effort and risk in this task. Some level of support provided to each member on the fact of whether or not due to the special climate of mutual aid. Team members show respect to each other and respect for public approval of behavior that serves as a basis for the development of self-esteem and self-confidence of individuals.

Teamwork affects the behavior and attitudes of its members. As a rule, the promotion and punishment of certain behaviors in the team have a greater impact on employees than appropriate management action. Team controls the emotional experience of its members by encouraging and weakening them. Unconscious mutual exchange, infection and manifold increase emotional experiences are processing inside the team. In doing this, precise control over the expression of emotional experiences that team encouraged or condemned is also to be implemented.

Any team requires its member’s competence in interpersonal interaction and the use of communication skills. Ability to listen and hear others to understand what is behind the words, to jointly seek the best possible solution to the problem may not be needed working in pairs or individually, but for teamwork all this is the method of work.

Team promotes correction of destructive behavior through imitation of attractive and encourages behaviors to focus on common goals and. manifestations of altruism. Team provides opportunities for self-knowledge and understanding of personal problems. Assessing the thoughts, behavior and emotional manifestations of the human, the team helps to adequately express itself. Team develops better insight and the ability to achieve consensus.

Team provides ample exercise feedback. Within the team there is a constant process of exchange of views on the behavior of the members, their contribution to the common cause, personal expressions and so on through communication and observation. Each team member shares his/her thoughts on the other members and gets their inputs.

Team also allows establishing and maintaining relationships between people of equal status. This equality of status can be recognized only by members of the team; members for its scope may have a different social status. This practice has beneficial effects on the development of individual experiences and attitudes of people, which contributes to better address the problems.

The team also creates favorable conditions for solving problems. Group discussion of the problem allows a wider range of alternatives, including innovative solutions, and finds the best solution. The team has a strong influence on organizational activities and organizational culture. The most important benefits of teamwork include creating conditions for competitiveness as well as the empowerment of multidimensional information gathering, the possibility of obtaining the appearance of a larger set of alternatives to solve the problem, faster decision-making, development of innovative atmosphere, reducing the level of the hierarchy, improving the quality of work, the development of job satisfaction (Lee & Chang, 2013)..

Impact of teamwork on the organization’s culture, is primarily expressed in clarifying and promoting the values that contribute to effective action. Clarity of vision and common values are characterized a team, which are cultivated by common efforts and transferred to other employees. Values of the team are individually responsible for the result, respect for others, trust, development, etc.

However, along with the benefits, teamwork has some limitations, which are determined by the peculiarities of team activities and team features (Salas, Bowers & Edens, 2001). Thus, under the traditional management difficulties arise in assessment team activities and supporting it. Introduction of team work involves organizational change in the decision-making systems, monitoring, evaluation, information and incentives.

In practice, teamwork can be implemented at the level of line management in teams, departments and project teams. Ideally, all managers should represent the group of like-minded team. As a minimum group of strategic management of the organization should be a team.

Good education is becoming increasingly important in today’s evolving society. Higher education is the knowledge that helps to make the right decisions in life. Knowledge of fundamentals, applied methods and techniques, proven experience of others applying fundamental laws – all together it creates the future professional thinking. That same mindset, with which, one will make the right decisions.

Higher education is a set of systematic knowledge and practical skills to solve theoretical and practical problems according to specialization, using and creatively developing the modern achievements of science, technology and culture. The term higher education also refers to training highly qualified specialists for the sectors of the economy, science, technology and culture in various types of specialized educational institutions.

At the present stage of development the interest to higher education increases. This is evidenced by the growth of the number of students. This process is generated by the growing realization that the new socio-economic situation of higher education is in itself an important condition for social and professional mobility (Kezar, 2010).

We can say that never before the role of knowledge was so appreciated as it is today. It is quite obvious that the future of the people and even countries, which can excel others in the development of new knowledge, scientific achievements and their transformation into modern technologies and products. Higher education is becoming more and more important for the individual and for the country as a whole. The more educated people in the country, the more prosperous it is.

At the same time, intensive development of a particular branch of production its demands to the formation of the person. These requirements are added, depending on the technical and organizational level of production, its scope and complexity, speed and nature of the changes occurring in it as a result of scientific and technical progress. The main factor determining the impact of production on the level of education a person has, is to change the technical and organizational base material production, as namely the development of the framework determines the changes in the composition and functions of production workers, until the emergence of new professions, specialties, new services.

Today, many organizations have high professional requirements to their employees and conduct training or retraining (if necessary) for staff.

Thus, the scientific and technological progress are three main elements of the manufacturing process: labor, means of labor and objects of labor – undergo qualitative changes are reflected not only in the emergence of new methods of production and quality of new materials, but also in the rapidly growing demands for quality education human (potential employee), who is a major factor in the production process. Growth of knowledge-intensive production leads to an increase in its intellectualization to increase the complexity of labor. Here, people with higher education come to the fore.

In addition, the increase in the proportion of highly educated personnel is a prerequisite for accelerated development of the processes of technical retooling and refocusing it on the latest release of products that embody the latest advances in science and technology.

Moreover, modern production needs sufficiently developed and prepared consumer (Brown, 2010). Higher Education participates in the preparation of such consumer, in the formation of people’s needs and thus makes possible the continuous expansion of the market, acts as a stimulant to the development and qualitative improvement of production.

Personally for me, higher education is a big step forward. This is generating of new knowledge and the acquisition of demanded in the market profession.

The major challenge of the global system of education today is the development of post-industrial forms of economic relations, which are characterized by continuous change of technology and knowledge that these technologies provide. Repeated return of people in one form or another in the educational process should be the norm for a professional career. In highly developed countries in the next decade, every employee throughout his/her career will be forced to repeatedly change jobs and even profile. This phenomenon is, of course, accompanied by a growing demand for education in various forms using new technologies (Brown, 2010).

In developed countries, continuing education performs a variety of educational, social and economic functions, providing a continuous development (growth) of the human capital of the nation; meets the educational needs of the population; flexible and rapid adjustment to changing workers’ labor market demands and technological environment; builds human capacity development of innovative economic and social sectors; eases unemployment by pulling a significant part of the regular work people in the sphere of education; massive influx of additional funds into the education system due to a sharp increase in the scale of educational activities; formation of a new technological and organizational culture.

References

Brown, R. (2010). Higher education and the market. New York: Routledge.

Kezar, A. (2010). Recognizing and serving low-income students in higher education: An examination of institutional policies, practices, and culture. New York: Routledge.

Lee, C. & Chang, J. (2013). Does trust promote more teamwork? Modeling online game players’ teamwork using team experience as a moderator. Behavior & Social Networking, 16(11), 813-819.

Rolfsen, M. (2013). “We put teamwork back on the agenda again and again” The role of support systems in autonomous teamwork. Team Performance Management, 19(5), 292-304.

Salas, E., Bowers, C. A. & Edens, E. (2001). Improving teamwork in organizations: applications of resource management training. Mahwah, New Jersey: CRC Press.