At some point during your college years, you probably heard the phrase, “College isn’t for everyone.” However, how many times have you really put that quote to thought?
Every year high school seniors apply to their dream schools. Some schools may be ones that mom and dad envisioned, others may be unrealistic.
Applying to college, however, does not gaurantee that these high school seniors will enjoy their experience there.
There are plenty of students in college not by choice but because their parents want them to be or because society expects them to be. If you ask these students to explain the significance of most of their classes, or how they affect them as students, they probably would not be able to answer.
The truth is education extends past seminars and lecture rooms.
Four-year colleges are not for everyone. It is time we cherish talent, skill, apprenticeship and trade school. We need to start encouraging children and teenagers — who really do not know if college is for them — to explore other aspects of education.
People see college as a safety net — a ticket to a comfortable life in the future. Corporations tend to hire employees with the highest form of education, irrespective of ambition and skill. With a highly competitive workforce, some companies are setting higher educational requirements for employment.
As the years went by and times changed, more and more people saw the benefits of a bachelor’s degree. Census data shows that the percentage of high school students that went on to college within a year of graduating elevated from 47 percent in 1973 to 67 percent in 2007.
This is not just an issue of students attending college because of their parents. It goes all the way back to expectations from high school — the one institution that watches teenagers grow up.
In high school, counselors talk to students from ninth grade to twelfth grade about college options. They have less emphasis on apprenticeships and trade and vocational schools. High school students see charts of income comparisons between college graduates and high school graduates. In some cases, there are even charts with comparisons of the average incomes of people with a bachelor’s degree, completed apprenticeship, or trade and vocational school degree.
It is no lie that going to a four-year college, on average, has its benefits both economically and socially. Nevertheless, going to a four-year college does not come with a customer satisfaction guarantee or a guarantee of getting a higher paying job than someone who has, let’s say, an associate degree from a community college. Twenty-five percent of bachelor’s degree-earning graduates make less than graduates with an associate degree, according to a study by Georgetown University.
While reading this, you might agree with the idea that a four-year degree is not for everyone, but we have a question for you. What do think of someone who, for instance, is a third-year dropout? Maybe you’d think they were lazy or could not handle the pressures that come with college. But would you consider this: A nice percentage of students accept loans during their college years and dropping out will not only have wasted their time but money as well.
If for example, a student takes an average of $3,500 dollars a year in loans, by the third year this dropout might have blown away $10,500 for an incomplete degree.
Federal data has shown that less than 60 percent of new students graduate from four-year colleges in six years. We are allowing people to create unnecessary debt.
Middle schools, high schools, educators, guidance counselors and even parents need to realize that there is more to the word “education” than graduating with a bachelor’s degree. A four-year degree is great, but what has society done to originality?