Oliver Curtis

Composition 1

Essay 3

Mr. Kiely

The Value of a College Education

The decision students must make to either seek higher education or take a vocational

highway to a career is one fraught with misconceptions. Some say college is the only way to

success. However, according to others, “college may not be the best, the proper, the only place

for every young person after the completion of high school” (Bird 127). Amid all these

conflicting opinions and ideas, it is sometimes easy to lose sight of the real purpose for going to

college. While a college education certainly plays a key role in career preparation, the

opportunity it provides for intellectual growth in the forms of self-motivation, effective goal

prioritization, and social flexibility can be considered the slightly more valuable benefit long-

term.

Society is permeated with an attitude of competitiveness based on the idea that success is

all or nothing. This attitude has also dominated the workplace, where employers are looking for

the brightest and best. As a result, the economic value of obtaining a college degree has

multiplied. To many students, it seems as if the most clear-cut way to obtain a high-income

occupation is to attend college and get a degree. In fact, statistics show that, on average, those

who graduate with a Bachelor’s degree earn around $414 more per week than those who go to

work directly out of high school (United States). After reviewing these numbers, some college

students cannot help but to view higher education only as a means to financial success, ignoring

its intangible, yet more valuable, benefits. Benjamin Barber in his essay “America Skips School”

described this attitude perfectly when he made the conclusion that students “dismiss the debate

over the origins of civilization…and concentrate on cash-and-carry careers” (119). All they see

in college is a gateway to the American middle-class. While there is nothing fundamentally

wrong with this belief, it does support the false premise that a degree instantly equals a

successful career. This process is also a precursor to the loss of the true value of higher

education.

There are several other benefits that come with obtaining a college education, yet many

of them are much more difficult to quantify in comparison to the purely economic rewards. This

is because intellectual development is not quantitative; it is qualitative. What ruler do we use

when we measure ideas and opinions? According to Jonathan D. Fitzgerald, "The value of a…

college education -- to you, to employers -- is that you've spent four years in a place where you

were forced to consider new ideas, to meet new people, to ask new questions, and to learn to

think, to socialize, to imagine” (par 10). Often, employers view a college degree not as a mark of

adequacy in a skill but as an assurance that an individual has learned to think for themself. A

college degree is supposed to mean that the recipient has learned to communicate effectively and

accurately, with a broadened perspective, and can be trusted to accomplish tasks and meet

deadlines efficiently. Colleges ultimately seek to provide students with life experiences that will

prove useful in much more than just their career.

While there is nothing wrong with going to college for the sole purpose of pursuing a

career, the true value of a college education cannot be reached if there is no intellectual, ethical,

or moral progression. In some cases, students will find that the technical skills they learn in

college are obsolete after only a few years. Excellent examples of this can be found in Computer

Science majors, where the rapid evolution of technology forces graduates to relearn and rethink

everything they were taught in college. However, if those students have taken advantage of the

true value of college, they will have the intellectual agility and capacity to do so. Plato, in his

“Allegory of the Cave,” asserts that individuals who reach such a level of enlightenment are

those who will benefit society the most through their leadership and service (Kreis par 2). Those

important life lessons students can learn if they are exposed to the academic environment found

exclusively at colleges will prepare them for so much more than a career after graduation; they

will prepare them for post-college life in all its uncertainty. In fact, uncertainty is one of the

primary reasons behind the importance of intellectual development on the path to a degree. There

is no guarantee of financial success or even of job placement after college, although a degree

certainly helps; however, there is a guarantee that if students approach college in the right way,

they will come away with the ability to make clear, informed decisions for themselves.

As with anything else, students get out of college exactly what it is they desire to obtain.

While earning a college degree is certainly an economic decision, higher education’s lasting

benefits come in the form of the personal growth and development that students will undergo on

their way to graduation. It is these things that make ultimately make college valuable and

worthwhile to both individuals and society as a whole.

Works Cited

Barber, Benjamin R. “America Skips School.” Writing on the River. Ed. Connie Kuhl. New

York: McGraw-Hill, 2012. 119. Print.

Bird, Caroline. “Where College Fails Us.” Writing on the River. Ed. Connie Kuhl. New York:

McGraw-Hill, 2012. 127. Print.

Fitzgerald, Jonathon D. “The Real Value of a College Education”. The Huffington Post. The

Huffington Post. 23 Feb 2012. Web. 6 Nov 2012

Kreis, Steven. “Plato, the Allegory of the Cave.” Lectures on Modern European Intellectual

History. The History Guide. 13 May 2004. Web. 20 Nov 2012.

United States. Department of Labor. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Education Pays.” Occupational

Outlook Handbook. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012. Web. 6 Nov 2012.

AA solid, well written essay. The works-cited page contains the required number of sources, The discussion is well supported with details and examples. The writing is clear, concise, and free from major grammatical error.

Bravo!