While some people advocate for teaching practical work skills in colleges, others argue that higher education institutions should prioritize sharing theoretic knowledge that may or may not benefit companies. I completely agree with the former viewpoint because practical courses can provide more economic benefits, and they encourage graduates to come up with innovative ideas.
First and foremost, skills that can be applied to solve real-life problems are more monetarily rewarding compared to bare theoretical knowledge. This is because the expertise in relevant fields frequently opens up career prospects for alumni right after college. For example, the majority of undergraduate students that enrolled in engineering programs receive job offers with initial salaries reaching as high as 100,000 US dollars even before graduation. A plethora of companies are willing to pay this amount of money to people with degrees in applied sciences because these employees bring real value to the workplace.
Not only do practical skills guarantee a higher wage but they also foster scientific breakthroughs than can significantly impact the world positively. Compared to theoretical research, industrial exploration results in ground-breaking inventions that actually revolutionize the society, instead of going only as far as publications in academic journals. For instance, 50% of the most successful CEOs of innovative companies, such as Jeff Bezos and Tim Cook, hold engineering degrees. Their backgrounds in pragmatic learning have allowed them to face real-world problems with state-of-the-art solutions, building up the base for startups that have changed lives of billions. This indicates how much more useful applied knowledge can be in comparison with sheer information.
To conclude, practicable insights avail both workers and employers, and initiate discoveries that change the world for good.