Has college lost value?
photo by pixabay from pexels.com
Today, many high school students feel the pressure of figuring out what they’re going to do after high school. Many of these students are pushed towards a job that requires a college degree. Although most jobs require some sort of degree, as the tuition cost goes up, the income of graduates is going down. Because of this, getting a four-year degree is becoming less useful and less impressive.
Since society has pushed the mentality that everybody should go to college, most people go to college. However, just because most people go to college doesn’t mean they complete college. According to thesimpledollar.com, 40% of college students drop out before receiving their diploma. These students end up thousands of dollars in debt due to student loans without even receiving what they came to get. There are millions of students who drop out of college without a plan or job in place and are expected to pay for student loans—they spent thousands of dollars on absolutely nothing.
“The cost of college is rising exponentially and there is no reason why it should. The college system is cheating us and fighting back seems impossible.”
“There are lots of advantages to going to college. But I think that for students who don’t know what they want to do, I’m not sure it makes the most sense,” Mrs. Tracy Wagner, a guidance counselor from St. Joseph High School, said.
Of those that get their college degree, only 28% of students take the expected four years to complete a bachelor’s degree, according to Forbes. Bachelor’s degrees are only supposed to take four years to complete, but most students take five or six years. If most students take longer than four years to complete a bachelor’s degree, can we really call it a four year degree? We still do. Two year public colleges are not much better. Only 26% of people who get their degree at a two year college complete it within that time frame. Why is it called a two year college again? Oh right, students are supposed to get a degree in two years. Not three. Colleges market degrees as taking four years or two years, but in reality that is just when it is possible. It is often not accomplished.
So why are students’ families, schools, and peers pressuring them to go to college? How come other options, like trade schools, are less sought out? According to The Simple Dollar, the average amount of money spent getting a bachelor’s degree is $127,000. The average trade school degree is around $33,000. Yet, society has told us that going to college is the way to success—the only way to success.
“As a high school counselor and as a parent with two kids in college right now, I think that we all want life to be better for our kids and, the way I was raised, it always involved education,” Mrs. Wagner said.
illustration by sam adkins
The main point of going to college is to further a student’s education. Many people do learn things about their profession through college, but students do not improve their critical thinking skills, according to medium.com. Critical thinking skills allow people to think rationally and, well, think. What good is being a doctor if you can’t think clearly in a bad situation? Critical thinking skills are what allow doctors to think calmly and thoroughly. College may teach you things about being a doctor, but that will not help much when they are in a bad situation and can’t remember what to do according to their unit two test.
I’m not saying everyone has to abandon college. There are great life experiences that can happen at college, and it’s a good way to start out your adult life without being completely on your own. In today’s world, people usually have to get a college degree to get a good job unless they go to a trade school for a specific profession. However, if most jobs are requiring a college degree, then the cost should stay the same, or even lower. In more fields of the market, when an item becomes more normalized the value goes down. For example, computers. Yes, they are still expensive, but once upon a time nobody could afford one. It was unreasonable. The cost of college is the same—unreasonable. The cost of college is rising exponentially and there is no reason why it should. The college system is cheating us and fighting back seems impossible.