Is College Necessary for Success?

By Elena Novak on May 20, 2013

Photo by willfolsom via Flickr

Lately I’ve noticed a developing trend on various media advocating that we should encourage high school students to consider alternatives to attending college. This is a big move from what I was told in high school, which was that the Master’s degree was becoming the new Bachelor’s, and without one you were probably out of luck.

Now, some bold commentators are taking two steps back and suggesting that college isn’t even worth it – at all. And maybe, just maybe, students can skip the pomp and circumstance and still get themselves a proper job.

Examining the Cost

Let’s be real – college is expensive. There are a lot of variables when it comes to college cost, such as whether you attend in-state or out-of-state, whether you are able to obtain federal grants or scholarships, and whether or not you decide to take out loans. Loans are the most common method of cost curbing, but they’re also the most likely to haunt you for the rest of your life.

Even if you are fortunate enough to get a decent job after college, loans can prevent you from saving money and getting ahead on your bills and payments. Loans can tether you to a lifestyle of simply making ends meet, where all the money you could have pocketed instead goes toward your loan payments, which may stick with you decades after you graduate.

According to a report published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, student loan debt has been on a steady rise since 2004, and the 2012 numbers are practically off the charts at $966 billion, or nearly $1 trillion. This is especially true in a society where the cost of college is also rising and the job market is nearly impenetrable.

What’d You Learn?

There’s a great song by the quirky British band Supertramp that has some lines that perfectly sum up college (tongue-in-cheek, of course). It’s called “The Logical Song,” and it goes like this:

But then they sent me away to teach me how to be sensible, logical, responsible, practical
And they showed me a world where I could be so dependable, clinical, intellectual, cynical…
Won’t you please, please tell me what we’ve learned?

So think about it students, what have we really learned in college?

In an article by Jeff Selingo published on LinkedIn, Selingo raises this question in terms of the debate over the “return on investment of a college education.” He writes, “Much of that conversation is focused on what students spend on college compared to what they get in return in terms of a salary. But if the purpose of college is to get an education, why don’t we measure the return on investment in terms of what students learn in college? After all, it’s the learning that we’re actually paying for when we write tuition checks, not training for a job that might be obsolete in two years.”

I can say that much of the knowledge, wisdom, and growth I’ve obtained in the past three years has taken place outside the classroom. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had some memorable professors, like the one who invited us all to his house for a potluck or the one who invited a yoga instructor to class to help us relax, but one of the best decisions I made in college was getting involved in the community of Tallahassee. I started volunteering at a non-profit organization and made invaluable connections with prestigious members of the community, and I learned what amazing things can happen when you get a bunch of people in a room who want desperately to see their city grow and succeed.

However, I would not have had the opportunity to volunteer if not for a program offered by a university center, nor would I have found mentors and friends who challenge me if not for the resources and organizations offered by FSU. But that’s not all college is about – our ultimate goal is to graduate with a degree, and that comes down to selecting a major.

Passion or Profession

Many students enter college with no idea of what they want to do – societal pressure tells them they have to. A lot of conflicting advice and soul-searching led me to the ultimate decision to study writing. If you haven’t known since you were a kid exactly what you want to do with your life, it can be really daunting to be confronted with that decision right out of high school. Universities pressure students to be in and out of the collegiate system in four years, and that’s a lot of stress for someone who may not know what to do for the rest of his or her life.

Terms meant to be helpful get thrown around by advisers, parents, and even spiritual leaders. “Find your calling” is a common phrase, but determining what you’re meant to do is pretty hard to figure out. “Do what’s best for you” is another one, which often means do what’s best for your future salary. My personal favorite is “follow your bliss.” That’s because I don’t buy into the idea that it’s more important to select a major based on its practicality than on its ability to make you grow in the field that you love.

It look me a long time to get there. If you feel like you change your major every given week, I can reassure you – that was me, too. I entered college dead-set on studying Political Science and becoming a campaign manager. Then I auditioned for the Music program, failed to get into the College of Music, re-auditioned for the Music Therapy major, got in, and decided not to do it. I threw around a lot of possibilities after that, always coming up with reasons why this one was it for me, and how it aligned so perfectly with who I was. I honed in on the Humanities major and chose to double major in International Affairs – but it didn’t end there. I threw out both, had a mid-college crisis, and finally settled on Creative Writing. Phew, what a mess.

If you’re in college and you have no idea what to study, consider studying what you really want to learn more about. Even if your end goal is to attend law school or medical school, they’re starting to like students who come up with degrees that are totally unrelated to law or medicine because they show that the student is well-rounded.

I wasted a lot of money taking classes and chasing majors that made my future seem financially secure, when it personally would have benefited me more to study writing from the get-go. I learned a lot in those superfluous classes, don’t get me wrong, but I could have saved myself upwards of $500 per class and become a self-taught learner on the subjects.”Do what you love and the money will follow” is another motto an adviser told me. Feel free to disagree with me, but if you’re going to go to college and you don’t have to study something job-specific, treat it like a trade school and study something you desperately want to learn more about and develop your skills in.

Consider the Alternatives

Now we can look at some suggestions for alternatives to college and why they’re worth considering. An article on LinkedIn written by Penelope Trunk has some pretty controversial things to say about colleges, which she believes are morphing into “job preparation centers.” She said, “There is plenty of data to show that teens are able to manage their lives without the constraints of school.”

Can young adults manage their lives without college? Maybe not, but is college doing anything to help us manage our lives? Have we ever learned how to pay taxes, how to balance a checkbook, how to cook more than a delightfully dull cup of Ramen? Sometimes I feel held back by the constraints of college, when studies prevent me from pursuing my side hobbies and passions and exploring my personhood.

Here’s one alternative to college proposed by Trunk: internships. Internships offer you a better chance at a job than a degree nowadays, thanks to the real-life experience. Here’s the problem: “You cannot take this route if you’re saddled with huge student loans. You can’t take this route if you’re inundated by homework in required subjects you don’t care about. You can’t take this route if you have no work experience when you graduate college,” she says. College, you’re kind of in the way.

In opposition to this suggestion, I can’t say with confidence that an employer will hire a young person with a lot of internship experience and no degree over someone with a lot of internship experience and a degree. However, I’ve attended seminars and heard employers say that the most important factors to them were persistence and personality. Go to an employer who interests you, offer your services for free, and work your way up through diligent work and effective networking. At least you can get a side job in the meantime and direct your income toward necessities instead of tuition.

Here’s another alternative: start a company. The key to this is “young people who start companies that are not necessarily successful in terms of product or sales but successfully market the founders as visionaries, self-starters, and hard workers. You can’t show those traits in school, so if you have those traits, you slow yourself down by going to school where you cannot exhibit your best, marketable traits.”

Trunk believes that students will choose to learn without the structure of college. That’s simply the reality of today: ambitious students are self-marketing themselves all over social media and teaching themselves the tools of the trade that they’re passionate about.

Don’t Drop Out – Necessarily

If you’re in the midst of college, I’m not telling you to drop out. This is not a call to arms for all college students to boycott the system. These are opinions that deserve to be challenged. Consider this an examination of the status quo, and a suggestion that college should not be the set default for all high school graduates, and that it’s possible this change would only benefit some, not all.

If you’re seeking a traditional job, college is probably the way to go. And there is certainly flip-side evidence that college graduates fare better – according to an article on Forbes, “getting a college degree did seem to give those with BAs a better shot at higher-paying jobs. Only 17% of those with associate degrees were working in college-level jobs, and 44% held high-school level jobs.”

However, there are a multitude of highly successful people who skipped out on the whole college thing: Mary Kay Ash of Mary Kay Cosmetics, Halle Berry, Henry Ford, Andrew Jackson, Rachael Ray, John D. Rockefeller Sr., and Mark Zuckerberg. Some were even college dropouts, such as Steven Spielberg, Bill Gates, and Michael Dell of Dell Inc. These, of course, are exceptional people who put exceptional effort into their work.

What it all comes down to, it seems, is recognizing your dreams and being unafraid to pursue them. For some, the path to realizing your dreams may include college, but if you aren’t sure what ultimately drives you, consider the other options.

 

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