Summer is approaching and the school year is about to end. As a senior in his last year of highschool, with no real plans or ideas about what to do in the future, I’m wondering-how important is post secondary education?
During most of my school years, a constant message that students recieved, both from the school and parents, is that college/university are important goals, without which we’ll spend a lifetime stuck in dead end jobs flipping burgers or mopping public bathrooms.
I’m curious what people here think. The majority of you are smart individuals, and from my experience reading the forums there are a lot of people with both college/university degrees as well as those without. I’m interested in hearing from everybody, but since it seems unlikely that I will continue on after highschool, at least for this year, I’m more curious about what life is like without a degree. Obviously most of the people here who don’t have degrees aren’t working at McDonald’s for minimum wage(or maybe they’re so addicted to the 'net that they saved every penny for a computer and 'net connection).
Anyways, I look forward to reading your (humble) opinions.
I would say “Yes”, simply because society has grown accustomed to having “professional” employees.
While it’s possible to get a good job without going to college, this is becoming increasingly difficult as time goes on. However, there are still some fields that one can get into without “professional” training… art fields, mostly, like writing and acting, although a degree from CalArts would REALLY help. In addition, those are difficult fields anyway, no matter how much training you have.
Your best bet is to get to college… it’ll give you four (or six) more years to be a kid.
It depends on the field you are getting into. I work in technical support, and if you have computer knowledge and skills you can get into it without any formal education. In fact, I’ve had a couple of 16 year old co-workers before.
My personal experience: I went right from HS to college - for one year. The time was not right and I was not ready. I dropped out and did some time in the Navy, then went back to college and got my degree. By that time, I’d decided what I wanted to be when I grew up.
There are careers where one need not attend college, tho specialized training is advisable - these include trades. For those who would look down upon laborers, may I present a former neighbor - he became a machinist, then a tool and die maker. He holds half a dozen patents for parts that go in prosthetic devices. He makes twice what I do… not bad for a shop rat.
The way I look at it, if you’re not willing to continue with your education, spending some time in the workforce or the military is a good alternative. Just get out into the world and do something… you don’t want to be the proverbial middle-aged bachelor living in mom-n-dad’s basement, and chances are, mom-n-dad don’t want that either.
Without some kind of training or education post-high school, your chances of landing a decent job are pretty slim, but I don’t think that going straight to college right after high school is necessarily the only way to go. I have friends who did it and turned out fine, but I also have some who did it and are incredibly unhappy with their choice. I kind of went both ways: I dropped out of college and went to trade school. After that, I decided to go back to college and finish my degree, not because it was expected, but because I wanted to do it.
"I, on the other hand, am a fully-rounded human being, with a degree from the University of Life, a diploma from the School of Hard Knocks, and three gold stars from the Kindergarten of Getting the Shit Kicked Out of Me." Captain Edmund Blackadder commenting on University education in ‘Blackadder goes Forth’
I’m a librarian at a technical college and can strongly recomend that you try a tech or trade school. The schedules are usually set up so you can take classes around your working hours, and you can either specialize in a trade like welding, EMT, culinary arts, computer help desk staff, or mortuary science (you don’t need college to dress a stiff) where there is a pretty good annual income; and/or you can take classes that will count towards your first year college requirements, should you decide to go the 4 year route.
Either way, chances are good that you’re going to need some kind of post-high school education if you want to make a decent wage.
