A real-world education is a set of skills or a breadth of knowledge that you attain outside of a traditional classroom or corporate setting. At a basic level, this differentiation can be explained through the classic idea of “street-smart” vs. “book-smart”.
In a traditional educational setting think: a lecture hall, a corporate learning seminar, a structured mentor session, you learn in a predictable environment. You are subject to organized tests and curated discussions, created to help you add new, hard skills to your arsenal. Particularly in higher education, you’re focused on the details of your interests, diving into the microscopic levels of the topic at hand.
In a real-world setting, for example: visiting a new country the idea is flipped. You’re taking in new knowledge in an unpredictable setting, one subject to quick, all-encompassing change at the drop of a hat. You’re placing yourself in an uncomfortable environment, so you’ll be forced to focus on many things at once, opening your eyes to the bigger picture of how we exist in the world. In the real world, you’ll learn soft and hard skills as you encounter obstacles and roadblocks designed to take you off course. You’re likely to spend a majority of your time re-evaluating everything that you thought you already knew.