Selecting Keynote Speakers For Higher Education Awards Ceremonies
Attending a university graduation ceremony is a proud moment for the grandaunts and their parents who have supported their child for the past three, four or five years as they completed their chosen degree. Working towards a degree will bring you the chance to have a successful career, brighter job prospects and a life changing time away from home. It is no small thing to achieve a university degree in this day and age so the keynote speakers chosen to attend the event need to reflect this in their speech.
Whilst I fully support those people who decide not to go to university, choosing a keynote speaker who has not experienced a university life is sheer foolishness on the part of graduation organisers. Going straight into a job after leaving school is a life completely different than if you choose to go to university for three or four years, and keynote speakers will not be able to relate with their audience if they have not gone through the same experiences.
You become a more independent person faster when you go to university. You are faced with situation where you might be forced to live with people you do not get along with, you have to make new sets of friends and you have to be financially organised to be able to budget your loan or get a part time job to help with living costs. These are things that you do not deal with when you stay at home.
For most people who go into work after school, they live with their parents for a number of months if not years, they choose friends to move in with when they do decide to leave home, and the security of a job contract leaves less financial worries than when you rely on student loans and part time work. Because unlike the many preconceptions about university students, the majority do not have financial help from their parents, they do it by themselves.
And so when graduation ceremonies are being planned, the keynote speakers should be chosen on their experiences, including attending university themselves. Otherwise their audience will be given a speech that has not resonance with their own lives for the past three years.