Degree or diploma: Does more time in class make you better at the job?
The Mt Kenya Times 
Degree or diploma
Kenya’s obsession with university qualifications misses a more important question — what can you actually do?
By Hadassah Karangu
For years, Kenyan society has treated the question of whether a degree is better than a diploma as though there is only one acceptable answer: a degree. A student who spends four years at university is routinely assumed to be more knowledgeable, more capable, and more employable than someone who spends two or three years pursuing a diploma. Parents proudly announce that their children are “doing a degree”, while diploma courses are spoken about in hushed tones, as though they are merely a consolation prize for those who did not quite make the cut.
But perhaps we need to ask a more important question: does spending more years in school automatically make someone more skilled, more experienced, or better prepared for the demands of working life?
The honest answer is no.
A degree and a diploma are different qualifications, and neither should be misrepresented as being identical to the other. A degree generally provides broader and deeper academic grounding and, in many professions, is the required entry point for specific career paths. A diploma, by contrast, often delivers more focused technical or occupational training and can offer a faster, more direct route into the workplace. In some careers, a degree opens doors that a diploma simply cannot. In others, practical training and accumulated experience matter just as much — sometimes more.
The problem begins when we confuse qualification with competence. A certificate can tell us what someone studied. It cannot tell us everything that person can actually do.
Consider two young people starting out. One spends four years pursuing a degree but gains little practical exposure to the profession. The other completes a diploma, enters the workplace immediately, and spends the next three years working, making mistakes, learning from experienced colleagues, and dealing with real clients and real deadlines. Ask who holds the higher academic qualification and the answer is straightforward. Ask who has more practical workplace experience and the answer may be entirely different. That is precisely where our understanding of education needs to evolve.
Take journalism as an example. A person can spend four years studying the craft and still struggle to write a compelling news story under pressure. Another can complete a diploma, walk into a newsroom, and spend years writing, reporting, conducting interviews, attending press briefings, chasing sources, and absorbing daily feedback from editors. After five years, who is likely to be the more capable reporter? Quite possibly the diploma holder — not because the diploma is inherently superior, but because experience is built through doing. Writing improves through writing. Interviewing sharpens through interviewing. Reporting strengthens through reporting. Theory provides the foundation, but eventually you have to walk into the field, find the story, verify the facts, and file it before the deadline.
Banking tells a slightly different story. In financial services, certain specialised roles require or strongly prefer a bachelor’s degree, and academic grounding in finance, economics, or accounting is genuinely essential for some positions. But even here, a degree alone does not make someone an excellent banker. A fresh graduate may understand financial theory with impressive clarity, while a colleague with several years of practical experience understands customers, banking systems, workplace pressure, and problem-solving with a depth that no textbook fully captures. One brings academic preparation; the other brings accumulated practical wisdom. The strongest professional, over time, needs both.
Medicine is where the argument requires particular care. Experience is valuable in every profession, but it cannot simply replace a legally required qualification. A nurse, clinical officer, laboratory technologist, and doctor each bring valuable expertise, but their training, responsibilities, and professional boundaries are distinct. Experience can deepen and strengthen a qualification. It cannot substitute for one where the law and patient safety demand otherwise. That is an important distinction that any honest discussion of qualifications must acknowledge.
Architecture offers another instructive case. Some technical roles within the built environment can be entered through diploma-level training, while becoming a registered professional architect requires a more advanced educational and professional pathway. The profession demonstrates that qualifications and experience are not in competition — they are designed to work together.
So when someone asks whether a degree is better than a diploma, perhaps the first question should be: better for what? The answer depends heavily on the profession, the specific role, and the individual’s goals and circumstances.
The real issue is never the certificate itself. It is what you do with it.
A person can graduate with first-class honours and still struggle to perform basic workplace tasks. Another can complete an ordinary qualification and become exceptionally good at their work because they never stopped practising, learning, and seeking out experience. This is precisely why employers consistently ask for both academic qualifications and demonstrated experience. They want to know not only what you studied, but whether you can apply it. Can you solve a problem? Can you communicate professionally under pressure? Can you take responsibility when something goes wrong? Can you learn something you were never taught? No certificate guarantees any of those things.
Students themselves have a critical role to play here. If you are pursuing a degree, do not wait until graduation to begin building experience. Intern. Volunteer. Freelance. Write. Build projects. Find mentors. Attend professional events. Create a portfolio long before anyone asks to see one. If you are pursuing a diploma, do not allow anyone to make you feel academically inferior. Build your expertise deliberately. Pursue professional certifications where they add value. Continue your education if your chosen career eventually requires it. Your diploma is a starting point, not a ceiling.
We also need to stop treating education as a race in which the person who spends the longest time in a classroom automatically wins. One person may spend four years earning a degree and then struggle to find their first opportunity. Another may spend two years earning a diploma, enter the workforce earlier, and accumulate years of experience while their counterpart is still studying. A decade later, their careers may look completely different — and there is no guarantee that the degree holder is further ahead.
Perhaps the most persistent misconception is that more years in school automatically produce more experience. They do not. Four years of studying is four years of education. Four years of working is four years of experience. The two can overlap and reinforce each other, but they are not the same thing, and conflating them does a disservice to both.
Education remains enormously important. It provides knowledge, discipline, theoretical grounding, and the foundation upon which practical competence is built. Experience then tests that knowledge against reality, often revealing gaps that no examination ever exposed. The strongest professional is not necessarily the person with the most impressive certificate or the shortest route into employment. It is the person who keeps learning and knows how to apply what they have learned in conditions that rarely resemble the classroom.
So perhaps we should stop asking young people only whether they are doing a degree or a diploma, and start asking a better question: what can you actually do?
Because eventually, the workplace is far less interested in how impressive your qualification sounds than in whether you can deliver when it matters. A degree can open a door. A diploma can open a door. But once you walk through it, your skills, your attitude, your experience, and your willingness to keep growing are what determine how far you go.
Education may qualify you for the opportunity. Competence is what makes you valuable once the opportunity arrives.
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