Why should I go to college?

Great Debates
81

I agree. A lot of young people think like “money isn’t important to me” or “I can settle for working for $8 an hour”. Well, the reason they can say this is because they are living in the comfort of their parents home.
My advice is to go to college and go to the best college you can get into. All schools are not equall. A significant value of the school is in the alumni network and on-campus recruiting.

Study something like finance, accounting, engineering, or something specific to a career you want to get into. Try to study abroad or minor in a foreign language. Philosophy, music, theater and other fluff majors are of little value unless you are simply padding your GPA for graduate school.

Go away to college, don’t commute. College is where you learn how to function in the world without mommy and daddy within arms reach away. Its a place you learn to grow as a person.

The real world is a cruel, competitive place that has no tolerance for those who lack the skills to compete. If you think that you can get those skills by the time you finish high school, you are sadly mistaken.

82

…or you’re really, really interested in these subjects and you’re really good at them!

83

Well I don’t have nothing to show for it. I wasn’t being facecious when I said that the most important thing I learned since freshman year was how much school doesn’t teach you. It is a kind of important thing to know. I was kind of your average assembly-line straight-A-but-no-more student, not really realizing that there were other things I could be doing with my life. I feel really stupid for not coming to the realization that there are other things before, but now that I have, the question is the best way to proceed from here.

It sounds like, from what I’m hearing from here, that an undergrad degree is important enough in most things that I should just get it over with. At the moment, (and this is subject to change at any time), I’m thinking the best option is to see if I can get a leave of abscence for a year or so, and find out for myself what the so called “real world” is like. If I decide that I don’t need a degree for whatever I’m doing, I will have saved myself a year plus of not doing what I want to do, and (more likely) if I decide I do, I’ll at least have a little bit more of a sense of purpose.

I think part of the problem is the fact that I’m in music school, and it’s kind of taboo to mention the fact to that you’re only in it for the grades to anyone.

What do you think of my situation?

84

I agree, and will go even further - like many people I knew, I originally thought that living on my own was easy and fun. It is not.

I discovered the hard way that being poor is not much fun. The work is just as hard, and the rewards are so much less - and you have nothing much to look forward to, except more of the same.

Living in a communial house with a bunch of friends sure sounded like fun - no parents! You can party all night! Do chores if you feel like it! You split the bills, so costs are low!

It gets old very fast - unless you enjoy living in a pile of garbage, working to support a lot of parasitic “friends” who have no cash for rent (but lots for booze and drugs!). I lost patience after two months. Such places only really work with very responsible people. But living on your own is more expensive (well, it would be more expensive if your roomies actually paid their rent - trying to squeeze rent money monthly out of your “friends” is a quick way to discover that they are not, in fact, your “friends” - or that you are a “hopeless tool of the establishment”, depending on your point of view).

And the work - who really wants to serve fast food as a career? I lost patience with that too. Which meant I had no cash, but lots of bills. I went back to work for the family sculpture business. The work was more fun, and I had the skill to do it - but there I was, working for my parents! :eek: I no longer lived at home, but working for the family was just as bad if not worse.

It was then that I discovered a great truth - you are only really free if you are financially dependent on your own efforts alone. And that means having skills which you can take with you. If you are not born wealthy, if you are not a natural entrepreneur, that means having some sort of profession. That in turn means having college or university education.

In fact, one of the reasons I did not go on to get a graduate degree and go into academic work was that the eternal round of begging for grant money which my academic friends engaged in seemed somehow inherently degrading. Of course, by the time I had finished university I was mentally allergic to being dependant on anyone and quite determined to make my own way.

85

But isn’t that the point of an undergraduate education? To teach you how little you (and the system) know? So don’t quit now; you’ve learned a lesson that many of my students are incapable of getting.

86

After living with 35 guys in a fraternity house, I was pretty tired of the communal living thing by the time I graduated college.

Probably the best way to convince someone to go to college is to have them get the best summer job they can get once they graduate high school. Then have them try to live on their own and see how they like it.

87

Personally, I found college to be the most interesting, exciting, intellectually stimulating time of my life. And I got no sex, drugs, and only a little rock and roll. I double-majored theater and English, and used both degrees, working in professional theater and writing. I went back after about 10 years and got a masters in library science and used that degree, too.

I understand you’re burned out on school. I think this is a pretty common sense reaction to a stressful situation. If you aren’t sure about college, why are you pushing yourself now? You’re only a junior, and you’re scheduling a break in a year and a half? I’d consider college right after school, but drop some credits and activities now. And don’t claim that you’re enjoying yourself and NEED to do this. If you were happy, you wouldn’t have started this thread.

I’m working in a tech school library, helping a bunch of students that, for one reason or another, screwed up or washed out of the 4 year hs and off to college route. Trust me, you don’t want to be here. If you’re intellectually curious, this is not your place. You’ll probably test out of a lot of the basic classes offered in a 2 year community college, so I wouldn’t recommend that, either.

And I must ask, if you don’t plan to go to college for a year, how you’re going to support yourself? Have your parents agreed to keep you, while you do volunteer work? Will they pay for travel? You may be an excellent writer. So was I. Still am. But it’s damn hard to sell enough to pay rent and buy food. Are you going to work a full year, and save every penny for college, (trust me, this will suck) or are you going to dip into existing savings and have fun for a year? My, lower-middle class, family was supportive about contributing to my education, but would have kicked me out on my ear to fend for myself if I got to the end of high school and wanted to take a year off and expected support.

The real world is not relaxing or fun and definitely not stress-free, if you have to take care of yourself. And no one in it cares that you were smart and responsible in high school. They’ll be wondering why you aren’t in college. If you want us to believe that you’re mature and responsible, you need to recognize that once you’re out of high school you’re an adult and need to make career and financial decisions.

If I were you, I’d talk to parents and guidence counselors and any other responsible adults I could find, to assess my current worth in educational and job markets.

Do you have enough credits to graduate high school early?
Do you want to?
If you’re not going to college, how will you afford to live?
Ever made a budget /looked for an apartment/bought groceries?
What are the job options and volunteer positions available were you want to live?
Have you earned college credits already? How many?
How much do you have saved for school and/or living expenses?
What are your longterm career goals and what education do you need to achieve them?( all the things you listed require college).
Any internships available?
How about study abroad programs for freshmen or high school seniors?
What do you know about financial aid?
How hard are you willing to work for scholarship money? If you’re a talented writer, you’ll be an excellent candidate for anything that requires an essay. If you’re smart and try, people could be lining up to give you money.

I think you need to answer most or all of these questions before making any decisions about what to do in a year and a half.

88

I have been a lurker on this board for a while and I registered specifically to reply to this thread.
I went to college for 1 year right after High School and did not like it. I knew before I went that I didn’t want to go but I went anyway because that is what our society deems is the right thing to do. I have never liked learning from school books. I am the kind of person that would rather experience first hand rather than read theory or others perception of “the real world”.

I am 42 years old and am currently a Senior network engineer for a worldwide telecommunications company. I worked my way to this position via the school of hard knocks. The point of this short bio is that it took me twenty years to get to the level that a college grad would be in only a few short years after getting their degree. That is the real world difference between getting a degree and not.

I have always resented the advantage that college grads get over me because they went to college and I did not because I am just as intelligent and hardworking as anyone with a degree. But that is something I have to live with because thats how the world works today. I do not regret not finishing college because it wasn’t my “cup of tea”. I wouldn’t change my life experience for anything ,but thats just me.

Ninjachick,
FWIW here is my 2 cents on your question. If you want to take a break from school for a year or two before starting college, DO IT ! But go back to college and get that degree because it will give you a big advantage when you get into the job market. Like most responses to this thread suggest, the longer you wait to go back to college the harder it will be.

The best of luck to you.
BTW, I have to disagree with those that said that college prepares you for the real world. Nothing prepares one for the real world . It just has to be experienced.

89

The lasting benefit of my college experience was one word - networking.

Which sounds horribly (or wonderfully, depending on your goals) corporate. But it means you can use the magic name of your alma mater to further your own goals. Want to find out how to save gay Republican whales? Some alum out there did it, or has a friend’s brother-in-law who can tell you where the best swimming grounds are. Wonder what its like to not go to college until later in life? Talk to your fellow older students Who Are Having It All.

And if their lives sound wonderful to you, then drop out. Because college is not indentured servitude - you can leave anytime. But you won’t know if it’s wrong for you unless you’ve actually tried it.

Believe it or not, you might find college to be less pressure than high school. Unless you’re living at home or in your home community, you won’t be surrounded by the same expectations or same-old-same-old-anything. Right now it sounds like you expect more academic grind - well, you might well put that on yourself, but nobody else in the school will. Because the school doesn’t care if you write the great American Novel or take Remedial English 101 - your tuition check clears either way. So you have to decide yourself whether you’re going to stretch your academic side further or if you’re going to take easier classes so that you have time to scuba-dive among the whales. You may even get a scuba-diving internship to travel to a Pacific island to study those whales. Now that’s the best of both worlds - traveling, immersing yourself in new situations, and getting a degree at the end of it.