By Kemmie Jackson and Mairen Brown
Pro: College IS necessary after high school for success — Kemmie Jackson
College is the place where a lot of people find their true path that they want to take in life. College is where people discover who they are and want to be. I believe that going to college after high school is going to set you up for success in the future.
My first reason that I believe going to college after high school will set you up for success after high school is because of the connections you will make. In college you meet new people that want to take same the career path as you, and they can help you in the field you want to pursue. For example, if you meet someone in college that has the same major as you, they could be a future coworker or boss, and when applying for the job you might have a better chance of getting because you already have connections there. There are also other ways of making connections in college such as being involved in campus activities and visiting your campus career center. All of these things are the benefits of going to college and accessible to most college students.
Next, is the college experience. Living apart from parents, having your own responsibilities, your own schedule, and possibly already having your own job. Going to college gives you all of these experiences on your own and ultimately prepares you for adulthood. In my opinion college is trial-and-error for most young adults. They learn from their mistakes and mature from them. College is also a place where young adults can have fun going to games, parties, restaurants, and meeting new people from different backgrounds. In my opinion, the people who don’t go to college miss out on a lot of these things. Going to college could be a fun learning experience—not just for academics, but for one’s self—that will help young adults in their future.
My last point is that going to college gives you a lot more job opportunity and variety. Someone who didn’t go to college doesn’t have many job options available to them. Although trade schools are an option, college is a more secure pathway to having a successful job after college. College is a safer and secure option for success is because having a degree gives you a wider range of job opportunities. Jobs are more likely to hire people with college degrees than they are to hire people with just high school diplomas. If you don’t go to college and your plans don’t work out the way you want them to, you really don’t have a backup plan. Getting a degree gives you the security you need for success.Not only is college about connections, and experience, it’s about excellence.
College is a great way to begin adulthood. The experience, mistakes, and learning will set you up for great success after high school and into your life.
Con: College is NOT Necessary for Success — Mairen Brown
$25,000.
$25,000 is the average amount of student loans that has dropped on every college graduate who needs student loans (a number totalling over 40,000,000 students), just six months after they graduate. Debt puts these students behind, but they don’t have to be. If this 13 percent of the work force weren’t forced to believe that they have to attend college to become “successful,” they could be living the life of Vogue editor Anna Wintour, cooking personality Rachel Ray, or producer Russell Simmons, who Financebuzz.com calls some of the “wealthiest people,” because they knew that for each of their fields, goals, an aspirations, experience could take them further than education.
In life, people tend to idolize jobs like actors, doctors, and lawyers, while at the same time disrespecting the jobs that keep us going — trade school jobs. The industry of trade jobs consists of occupations like mechanics, electricians, welders, and construction workers. They are the jobs that no matter what, we are always going to need, and not everyone can do them, so people pay the big bucks for these services. These jobs require training and learning just like any job, but nowhere near the amount of time or money that a colliegate level education requires. The average salary of an occupation in the trade industry ranges from 30k-150k. A six-figure salary can be made in trade jobs, but instead, people go to school to train as actors, doctors, and lawyers—some of which are pofessions that require aditional scholling and costs. Do you know what the average actor makes? Around $38,000 a year. This isn’t because these actors aren’t talented, but because an educational background does not help very much when making it to the Hollywood, as most famous actors have no educational background in theater. So this $38,000 salary these actors have to live off of is only $8,000 above what Georgia considers a “livable wage.” The average lawyer? $72,000-$130,000. And the average salary of a doctor? Approximately $180,000. Yet we idolize jobs that require collegiate-level education and turn our noses up at the jobs that keep our world running.
I am going to college. And my ability and desire to attend college doesn’t contradict the fact that college is not necessary or accessible to everyone. I drive home every day, do my homework, eat dinner, go to sleep, and do it all over again the next morning. But imagine my life went a little like this: I ride the bus home every day. It takes me an hour to get home. Once I get home I walk to my job, work an 8-hour shift plus overtime so I can afford to buy the groceries for my family that week, get home again at midnight, do my homework, eat dinner, go to sleep at 2 am, wake up for the bus at 6 am, and go back to school. College continues to get more and more expensive each year, and the competition gets harder and harder. To feed the idea to students that everyone needs college completely ignores the group of people that can’t afford $26,000 a year in addition to room, board, and living expenses. College is not necessary, and for many, it is a luxury that they simply cannot afford. Although there are efforts to make college more affordable with loans and scholarships, loans quickly become debt, and only seven percent of all college applicants will recieve scholarships.
College is not the key to success. Experience is the key to success. Learning through trial and error is the best way and only necessary part of becoming successful. In the application and interview process, employers might ask you what college you went to and what your major was, but they are also going to ask about previous experience, and this carries more weight. The ability to say, “I know I can do this job, not because I have researched and studied how to do it for four years but because I have been doing this job since high school,” is even more important. So, to anyone that still believes that college is necessary, just look up where Bill Gates went to college. Oh wait, he didn’t.
