GMAT AWA

“Education has become the main provider of individual opportunity in our society. Just as property and money once were the keys to
success, education has now become the element that most ensures success in life.”
In your opinion, how accurate is the view expressed above?
Explain, using reasons and examples based on your own experience, observations, or reading.

Today's economy is knowledge based economy. The person who has the knowledge has upper hand over other. This knowledge building process in an individual starts with primary education in childhood and subsequently moves ahead with secondary and higher education. So, education is a must to become successful in today's economy. Number of examples can be drawn from our experiences to prove this point.
We have seen that those countries which have taken care of education have done relatively better than those nations who have not given importance to education. Take an example of USA, UK. In these counties government has policies and infrastructure in place to make sure that each individual get access to education. So they are much better off than developing counties such as India and China in terms of employment, living standards, economical condition etc. Lot of talented people are there in these developing countries, but they are not able to work to their potential because of lack of education. So, people are not able to perform number of tasks, which on one side results in unemployment and on the other side creates shortage of skilled people. Even government in these counties have realized this fact and have lately put lot of investment to improve infrastructure and results are forth coming.
Education not only creates knowledge, but also it helps in personality development, imparts moral and ethical values. These values are really important to get rid of various sorts of problems that most of the nations face today such as corruption, bribery, crime etc. As we have seen in countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan, most of the people not get access to education. So, they are put by vested interest into various illegal activities, terrorism etc, that goes against both nation’s and an individual’s success.