Why Should You Go To College Now

Every year, thousands of high school graduates receive letters of acceptance, or rejection, with the belief that where they attend college will determine their employment future. As a high school student preparing for college, I would like to believe that that is not necessarily true. Society and social pressures often give the impression that to live a successful life, a degree must be earned from a specific university, yet the reality is, that where you go to college isn’t as important as most assume.

Whether an individual attends a prestigious university or a common college is less important than the skills and knowledge they can provide employers, so the cost and debt incurred may not be worth it why you should go to college.

Where an individual attends college isn’t nearly as important as society makes it out to be. Employers only care about how well and efficient an employee is when completing a task, not about where those skills were obtained.

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Even Obama once stated, “I have no idea where most of the people who worked for me went to college. I just know: Did they get stuff done or did they not.” Likewise, a “survey conducted by Gallup found that only 9% of business leaders consider where a job applicant went to school to be “very important.” Rather, the amount of industry knowledge that person possessed was overwhelmingly most important, at 84%, followed closely by the candidate's job skills at 79%.”. Attending a prestigious university rather than a common college to earn a degree makes no difference to employers as long as the skills of the employee meet or exceed their expectations.

While society makes out college as a factor in determining someone’s success, employers don’t necessarily care where an employer went to earn a degree.

Moreover, the cost of attending a prestigious university is absurd, and may not be worth it. According to Mercury News, “more than 44 million Americans owed about $1.5 trillion on student loans at the end of March 2021, more than twice what they owed a decade earlier.”. Student debt has sky-rocketed in the past decade and is a problem not worth the price. A study done by Pew Research found that “about a third of student loan holders think the lifetime financial costs of their bachelor’s degree outweigh the benefits.” A “good” education has been wrongly interpreted as “expensive.” According to Forbes “40 million Americans are burdened with student loan debt that totals over $1 trillion”, which is outrageous, considering that most college students will not make an income that will satisfy their debt. The burden of student loan debt from an elite school is not worth the price. Attending an elite university includes a future debt that could easily be avoided for less costly options that can earn the same degrees, and since employers do not tend to care where the degree came from it is not worth the cost.

Finally, it may not matter why you should go to college, or what college an individual attended, it is the fact that they did. To employers, it’s your abilities that set you apart from others, not an expensive degree. The skills one can provide are far more important than the school they went to. In the end, it isn’t the college you attended that determines success- it’s yourself. College is important, but even more important is the knowledge gained from the experience. Perhaps attending the most distinguished school can mean selecting one that carries cachet in a specific field of study, not the most pricey and renowned university.