Is it still worthwhile to attend college?
- Details
- Category: Your Opinion is Wrong
- Published on Friday, February 17, 2012 - 10:19
- Written by Tom Z
The website Matador Life has a very intriguing new article that questions whether it’s still a good idea for high schools to seek out a college degree. They bring up some good points. For example:
1) In this technological world, you can learn a lot of things on your own.
2) The average graduate begins a career with a startling amount of debt.
3) Experience is often more valuable than education.
4) College doesn’t teach kids how to be entrepreneurs.
There are several other reasons but those are my favorites. However, I’m going to give you two reasons why you should still attend college.
1) College is fucking awesome.
2) You need a degree to get a good job.
I graduated with a B.A. in Communications. That’s right, Communications. Every joke you’ve heard about that major is absolutely true. I learned nothing in college, except the rules to Asshole and how to make a Geocities page sound like a credible source. I went to my school’s library once in four years. For my senior thesis, I wrote about being too distracted to write a senior thesis paper. This was long before being “distracted” was a thing, and in hindsight, it was possibly the most brilliant thing I’ve ever written. Still, my senior thesis was about video games and the Internet and contained zero documented reference sources. This is the kind of education you get with a college degree, and it costs you roughly $100 grand.
Nevertheless, you need that degree. Sure you can get a job without a college degree, but if you’re looking for an elite job, one that pays good money and leaves you financially secure for life, it still pays to have that degree. Want to be an engineer? Check out the careers site for United Technologies and see how many jobs they’re offering to non-college graduates. Want to be in finance? Go to the Goldman Sachs career site and see how far that high school diploma will get you. You can’t be a teacher, a doctor or a nurse without the appropriate diploma. If you want to be a plumber, that’s cool, go do it. But to work in most corporate settings, you need that college degree before you can even begin discussing your experiences and skill set.
Instead of looking at college as an esteemed institute of higher learning, I prefer to view my tuition as a $100,000 cover charge. I showed my credentials to the bouncer, paid my fee, went inside, had a blast and left with some bar schwag (i.e., a diploma). Whether I hooked up after the bar closed, that was up to me and my ability to charm people. But if I never paid that cover charge, I wouldn’t have gotten inside in the first place, and I never would have had any chance with all those drunk sorority sluts. Instead I would have had to hit on townies at the after-hours falafel stand. And while that works sometimes, it’s not the greatest plan.
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