Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: It is better to choose a university whose graduates have good job opportunities than a university who has famous professors. Use specific examples to support your answer.

There is little doubt that the better choice would be falling into the university who has famous professors. I have to admit that “good job opportunities” certainly makes this issue a little complicated but it won’t change several basic ideas about higher education.

University has always, from the great educational patterns set up by the early German educators several centuries ago, tied up quite closely with academia. Once a person decides to attend a university, the implication is to say this person chooses to devote himself to academic research and has the willing to have knowledge and truth as his life-spanning companions. Famous professors are the essential part of college system. They are responsible to impart the methodology of research to the next generation in order to maintain and exceed the existed human knowledge. Students with the expectation of learning the “art” of academic research apparently to attend universities within which famous professors are dedicated in “pure” academic instruction.

One of my friends from college spent three summers, summing up to nine months, in the jungles of Southeast Asia, researching the customs and religious tradition of indigenous tribes. That she did this was because she was inspired by a famous anthropologist in Columbia University and willing to be part of his program. She made it eventually and right now she is still on the way exploring the foreign lands in Latin America and Sub-Sahara, dwelling with her dearest new friends. She loves it and she deserves it.

I have seen so many heated discussions about the relationship between higher education and job market. I have also found it disappointing because historically we would not be expected to have a “good job” if we chose to receive any form of serious academic instruction. Besides, I have found the widespread assumption of “good job” may mean a job with a deal of good money. However, higher salary does not necessarily mean a milestone or a significant goal to most people. A Wall Street financial analyst might hardly be considered as among the happiest people in the world. Diogenes, I am very assured, was living a much more delightful life than Alexander the Macedonian.

Apart from all the argument on how better the university with famous professors than that with good job opportunisties, haven’t we ever considered a student of a famous professor will have much more chances to get a better job than those who follow the study of second-rated minds? My collegues I am working with now mostly studied from famous professors in those amazing universities. They eventually chose to give up academic research (though they had done a great job in their fields) and start working in a company. They were brilliant in school and they are still brilliant in both their resume and their actual work.

So a university with famous professors, with the very possibility, may offer you a way to be outstanding in both academic development and job market, isn’t the answer to the statement above clear enough?