Growing up, most of us live under the impression that there is a certain natural progression to our lives that we are expected to follow: go to elementary school, middle school, and high school, attend college, get a job, work and then retire. While there’s nothing wrong with this pattern, society as a whole is evolving to include another critical component to living as an enlightened, successful person: continuing education. By nature, continuing education is a process that should continue throughout one’s life and that can be especially important to altering your career path for the better. Continuing education can help your career by allowing you to put in a relatively small time investment in exchange for possibly monumental gains.

Though college itself can be considered a form of continuing education, the phrase here specifically refers to courses that you take after you have left school and are working. Here are five ways that continuing education can help your career.

• By improving your skills in your current position. Continuing education can help your career by helping you to maintain—and improve upon—the career skills you already have. Learning something once and then never revisiting training can ultimately lead to you get “rusty” in regard to a particular practice, skill or topic that may be involved with your job.
• By keeping you up to date on the latest industry trends. Along the same lines, continuing education can help your career by introducing you to new, innovative and desired ways to do your job. When employers notice that you are familiar with the most recent and efficient ways of performing a task, then you will have an advantage over those employees who do not.
• By moving you into a higher salary bracket. Taking continuing education courses can help you advance to a higher position in your career—and therefore into one that pays more money. The more qualified you are, the more you will be worth in the eyes of your employer or potential employers.
• By allowing you to change careers altogether. You may feel like it’s time to enter a new career field, but you are unsure as to how to go about doing so. Continuing education is an ideal way to break into a new industry after you have already been working. Starting over in your career will be much easier when potential employers see that you have the qualifications to back up the skills you are marketing.
• By providing you higher personal satisfaction. Advancement aside, you may simply get more out of your career personally if you invest time in continuing education courses. This is especially true if you are studying a topic that you are passionate about because continuing education will just give you more exposure to various aspects of the career field you enjoy.

If you need a push in a better direction when it comes to your career, continuing education can help. Whether you are unhappy with your current job, are unable to see yourself advancing or feel behind on current industry trends, consider continuing education as a means to change it.

Sign up for online continuing education courses through UWA Online today! Visit us at www.uwa.edu/ce to browse our course offerings.