AFTER graduating from basic education or high school, there are lots of choices a student can make. If you are an affluent student here in Spain, then you can go to the Universidad de Madrid. There are lots of program offerings to choose from at the Universidad de Madrid. If you are coming from a fishing village such as the ones located in Costa Blanca, then you may be enticed to take a degree in fisheries. Or if you’re the son of a rancher, then you may be enticed to take a course in animal science. That can surely spell fun. You will be instructed how to tame a cow and how to castrate a boar. Even female students are not exempted from this but then again, that spells adventure in the first place, right?

Or if you dream to become a lifeguard someday and save lives as a member of the Coast Guard component of the local Guardia Civil, then you may first take a degree in criminology at the Universidad de Madrid and take some naval courses later. Who knows, you may even outrank people who are senior than you when you enter the service. This is one advantage if people are diligent enough to continue their education beyond high school and beyond a bachelor’s degree.

Even lawyers and physicians take time off from practicing their fields to continue studying and take refresher courses. These refresher courses are a requirement by the professional bodies in whatever country you come from. However, if you want to zero and hone in on your English mastery, then better take a continuing adult education in English language acquisition. Don’t be so conscious with your grammar because everybody in your class are adults just like you. Here then spells the difference between a successful person and someone who is failing in his or her career.

If you are that gutsy to learn new things, you will really succeed in whatever endeavor you are trying to pursue. Don’t rest on your laurels. Always learn every day. Learning is not just limited to academic stuff after all. It is a wholistic approach and concept. When you log on to your computer and see what’s the best stock available in the market, then try to research and deduce on what company shares will you buy for this day. To do that, you must research on the movements in the market. And that’s already one aspect of learning.

Now, let’s go back to getting beyond a bachelor’s degree. If you are a degree holder in mass communications perhaps, you may want to get a degree in technological communication management. Once you have finished your comprehensive exam and thesis and have graduated in that field, then your employer will look upon you impressively and will even promote you to a supervisory position. There may be a possibility that you will overtake the career of a person way ahead of you in terms of age and who has a bachelor’s degree same as yours that is mass communications.

EVEN though basic education is called basic but learning definitely doesn’t stop there. Learning is for a lifetime. Even if you’re already an expert in infectious diseases working every day at the lab of the USAMRIID or United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, you need to consult once in a while with your counterparts from the WHO, CDC, Johns Hopkins and the Mayo Clinic, among others. Some of this learning is more mandatory in nature. Thus, we have what is termed as continuing education. Mandatory continuing education is common among all professionals.

Let’s say for instance that one is an architect. One’s license will be suspended after five years if he or she doesn’t enroll in a program on recent architecture updates. That kind of program typically runs two days anyway and after its culmination, participants will get a certificate from the body which regulates your profession whichever country you come from. And here’s another catch. If you are tired or if you’re too busy to go to a weekend seminar, then take one online. Just like the traditional seminar setting, an online course on updates about your profession also takes two days to accomplish.

This is actually more practical for people who are working during the day or even during weekends. All they need to do is log in to the Internet and secure the course syllabus as well as the corresponding quizzes for that single day and send back the answers to the quiz. They will also get the certificate either emailed to them or mailed as a hard copy. But still, there are other forms of continuing education.

If you’re in a developed country like the Philippines, you will encounter a program leading to a bachelor’s degree in Development Communication. It is under the College of Agriculture in whatever university you are enrolled in. The program is aimed for students to be trained in communications so they can use that medium to propagate development in that country. After a student has graduated from that certain program, he or she has the option to continue with two more academic years of studies leading to a master’s degree. He or she may perhaps take the program leading to a master’s degree in technology communications management. This is a relatively trendy program because information technology is the buzzword nowadays.

However, the emerging revolution nowadays next to the information technology revolution is the wellness revolution or the propagation of the health industry. That’s why many persons would like to take up nursing studies. After having been a nurse, they still want to pursue programs leading to a master’s degree in nursing. That is continuing adult education. But even a person with an alltogether diverse field can migrate to another one. There is an accountant I know who has taken short courses in reflexology, massage therapy and physical therapy. He is now an instructor in massage therapy, acupressure and reflexology while at the same time earning in his main livelihood as an accountant. That’s the biggest benefit in continuing adult education.

EVEN though a person has already completed basic education that is high school, he or she still needs to pursue a degree so that he or she can be competitive and so that he or she can have income in life either in the form of a business or through a job. Even when one is putting up a business, one cannot just live on capital alone. The person needs to have a business degree so that he or she can lure in some customers. The businessman needs to have some marketing strategies and tactics. And one can only learn this in school.

For those who are wary to complete a four-year course, there are still several associate degrees to choose from. Associate degrees which take about three academic years to accomplish vary just like a typical program leading to a bachelor’s degree. However, graduates of associate degrees do not take board exams. But they can easily go to college without taking any entrance examination because they have prior knowledge to the field already. Programs leading to an associate degree are found in vocational schools and community colleges.

But even when a person doesn’t like to go to a traditional campus type of school, he or she can still enroll online. The advantage of online education is that it doesn’t have any boundary. Even when the school is located in the United States, one can enroll in it even when he or she is in Spain. However, reputable universities such as Georgetown, Johns Hopkins or Oxford with online extensions only cater to students who have passed their entrance exams. This is of course on top of the SAT. Online education is also the method to beat for people who are too busy with their adult lives and livelihood. These are intended for people who want to take up another course. For instance, if one is already a lawyer and would love to be a nuclear engineer, then he or she can easily enroll in a nuclear engineering course online. The advantage of this method is that the student just logs in to his or her student account at his or her own convenient time so that his string of livelihoods won’t be disturbed.

Even when a person is already a full-fledged lawyer or scientist or engineer or physician, there is still what is called continuing education. Some persons stop going to school already after being an expert on a particular field yet others want to explore new ones. Continuing education is intended for them. Also, continuing education is intended to update oneself in the field that he is an expert already. For example, a physician who is considered an expert in infectious diseases at a rural county in Maine may not know of updates about the field that are happening in research laboratories in Finland and Germany and the rest of the world. These pieces of knowledge are then collated and formed into one syllabus for that physician to learn. That in a way is called continuing education and a certificate of completion is then given to him or her as part of his accolades.