Real Importance of Academics and College Education

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Throughout a person’s life as a minor, you’re told on a consistent basis that without academic success, you won’t “succeed” in life (with success here being defined as a decent job that pays $30,000 or more a year). This belief is old fashioned. Over the years, the world has changed and with it the skill set needed for jobs. The job market has gotten to a point where college degrees and academic success actually don’t specifically matter in the job market (other than if you’re looking for a specialty job like doctor, lawyer, or teacher).
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If you are not looking for a speciality job, colleges can just end up being very pointless and expensive experience. The experience of going to college itself can be a stressful one. It’s was implanted in children’s head at an early age that you need to do well in school and that doing well in school is the only way to do well in life.

This can lead to much pressure on you- almost an unbearable amount. As you apply to college you’ll be expected to go somewhere “good”- especially if you worked as hard as your parents had wanted you to. By the time you actually get to the “good” college that you were expected to go to like say…Harvard- the stress might actually become overwhelming to the point of depression. Even to thoughts of harming yourself. Take this into consideration: college is now portrayed by the media as a time of heavy drinking by media.
That’s just general thinking.
So, it’s quite a big deal when a study done in 2009-2010 by the University of Virginia shows that out of 100,000 deaths, alcohol was related to only 4.86 deaths while suicide had 6.88 deaths (Jones). Suicides have been related to 50% more deaths than alcohol. That alone illustrates how stressful college can be on a normal student. While those are more generalized statistics, a study back in 2004 made by the Harvard Crimson showed that between 1994-2004 there had been 15 suicides at Harvard alone. On top of this, at least 10% of the student body had thought about suicide(College Confidential).
I believe this shows just how stressful college can be, and for what? Only the badge of having a college degree on your resume…and $200,000+ in student loans. Other than the stress college gives you, it can also be a pointless experience in relation to the job world. In the past few years, college graduates have been getting jobs more and more unrelated to the major they spend years working on. Less than half of the employed college graduates are in jobs that don’t require their 4 year degree(McGinnis), while 37 percent of all employed college graduates are in jobs that don’t even require a degree past your high school diploma(Denhart).
Even without a college degree, generally it’s still very possible to obtain what I defined as successful($30,000+ salary) in the beginning of this essay. Take my dad, for example. He was a college drop out after a few months. Afterwards, he went on to have a 35000 dollar a year administration job, which isn’t necessarily bad by any means. The fact that my dad can do this shows that college is not, in fact, actually necessary anymore. College has become a badge to give you a one-up over your competitors when you start to look for a job.
College is not only unneeded to obtain a successful job it can actually be detrimental to one’s financial stability. According to award winning economics professor, Philip Oreopoulos, “While policy makers and parents continue to push the nation’s youth to enter college, the cost of attending college is increasing and students are borrowing more than ever to finance the investment. Moreover, students today are taking longer than their peers in past decades to complete a college degree, a fact that itself can complicate the decision of whether to attend college.” This quote shows that students are beginning to take even more time to earn their degrees than the usual four years. This wouldn’t actually be too big a problem — if it wasn’t for the rising costs of colleges(Bidwell).
According to JP, a corporate finance worker of Usnews.com, colleges are expected to have a total cost of more than 205,000 dollars by 2030. That number only accounts for the basic 4-year degree; it can also be quite intimidating, given that with a degree graduates fresh out of college in 2013 are only making an average 45,327. This with the cost of living is hardly enough to allow anyone to pay off their student loans in a reasonable amount of time. This trend cannot continue to grow or the college degree must be devalued in order to allow most people fairer shots at the world — actual realistic chances, not just to survive but to thrive post college. Unless you are aiming for a speciality job, there are few reasons to go to college and attempt to be successful in it.
I feel the only reason most people go to college is because of the stigma/social norm set up by society. There’s a stigma seen in media that represents people that skip college as the future Mcdonalds and Burger King workers of America. I simply think this is not true. You can also see in the media that tons of successful people are college/high school dropouts. Take a look at Bill Gates, who at this point is the richest man in the world. Mark Wahlberg, Eminem, Mark Zuckerberg, Chris Rock and countless other people we consider rich and “successful”. They did not gain success because of school, they got that way because of their own abilities. Most people have natural intelligence which allowed them to think of their own brilliant ideas even without going to/graduating college, which may prove to be more expensive than the stress and headache it’s worth.
I think that, to some extent, it’s wrong to judge a person based on whether or not they went to or graduated college. Sure, college does mean you have put in a certain amount of hard work and effort and most likely you can do this at your job. However, it does not determine your intelligence, and I think there should be an alternative thing that allows you to train in the field of your choosing, instead of a class which may or may not apply directly to what your career entails-plus a billion other irrelevant classes. Another problem with school is that it stifles your creativity. Back in 2006, a TED talk was done by Sir Ken Robinson who said “we’re all born with immense natural talents but our institutions, especially education, tend to stifle many of them.” He went on to talk about how schools are causing a huge waste of talent by making the school systems so linear.
The current school system drills certain ideas into a student’s head. This isn’t necessarily intentional by teachers, but it does happen a lot due to the child teen moldability, and can stop them from exploring other things by always sticking to the math/science-heavy curriculum. To further this, some teachers, such as math teachers, say problems on tests have to be done in a certain way, and that students won’t get full points even if they showed their work and came in with a right answer. If we want this to be changed, the schools will need to make academics more moldable to the student’s needs (rather than the other way around). The curriculum should be flexible, and the only requirement would be to get a certain amount of work each semester for each class per teacher guidelines.
I also think you should be able to choose the topics you want to work with so as not be loaded with work so linear and irrelevant to personal growth. This would allow the person to set up their own abilities to be more creative later in life, which can help them think about situations with more perspective. With this simple solution, academic success would lose a lot of importance. This solution relies much more on the success and hard work of what the person is passionate about, which would harbor much better results in areas such as test scores as well as student mental/emotional health. Some people could say that education is still really important and relevant: its linearness and unrelated classes in college allow you to always make sure you know what you want to do with your life; that you always know what kind of career you want, not just a job after college.
By taking all sorts of classes, no matter the structure, allows you to explore and see what you are and aren’t passionate about. Doing well in said classes allows for a deeper understanding of the world, as well as a well rounded experience which will help you in most situations later in life. Academic success also allows you to make stronger bonds with teachers, who can recommend you based on your work habits. This can allow you to get your first job, or even get into a certain college- all because of a few simple words. Academics can be seen as very important and success in them can be seen as an even greater importance: without seeing your academic success or success in other fields, why would you ever get a job if they have no past record of what you are capable of? Look at major league athletes or actors.
Most have past records of acting or sports before making it big in a movie or signing a contract with a team. Why then, if you want to be successful, wouldn’t employers need something similar? Academics are getting less and less important as years go by. They can hinder children from being creative, and make you confused as to “what to do with your life”. They set up college to be a seemingly necessary thing for people who just want non specialist jobs. Even for people who want specialist jobs, there should be a singular specialized training program for their path of choice. That way they don’t have to go through a bunch of other classes that are completely unrelated to what they want to do with their life.
Say a person who wants to be an artist; they shouldn’t be forced to take other classes unrelated to art, like forensics or something along those lines. With the rising costs of college, is the money really worth the experience and reward you get out of it? People should start thinking about what they’d really get out of it instead of mindlessly following a societal-set procedure to go to college.
Works Cited

Bidwell, Allie. “‘The Rise in Tuition Is Slowing, But College Still Costs More.” US News. U.S.News & World Report, 24 Oct. 2013. Web. 08 May 2014.
“College Confidential Discussion.” College Confidential Discussion. N.p., 26 May 2004. Web. May 2014
Denhart, Christopher. “Underemployment of College Graduates.” Underemployment of College Graduates. N.p., Jan. 2013. Web. 29 Jan. 2014.
Jones, Sally. “More U.S. College Students Die from Suicide Than Alcohol-Related Causes, U.Va. Researchers Find.” UVA Today. N.p., 4 Nov. 2011. Web. 29
Jan. 2014. McGuinness, William. “Half Of Recent College Grads Work Jobs That Don’t Require A Degree: Report.” The Huffington Post. The Huffington Post.com, 29 Jan. 2013. Web. 28 Jan. 2014.
Oreopoulos, Philip, and Uros Petronijevic. “Making college worth it: a review of the returns to higher education.” The Future of Children Spring 2013: 41+. Academic OneFile. Web. 8 May 2014.
P, J. “How Much Will You Need to Send Your Child to College in 2030? – US News.” US NewsRSS. U.S.News & World Report, 25 July 2012. Web. 08 May 2014
Robinson, Sir Ken. “How Schools Stifle Creativity.” CNN. Cable News Network,3 Nov. 2009. Web. 09 May 2014.
“Salary Survey: Average Starting Salary for Class of 2013 Grads Increases 2.4 Percent.” Salary Survey: Average Starting Salary for Class of 2013 Grads Increases 2.4 Percent. Naceweb, 4 Sept. 2013. Web. 07 May 2014.

Luz Estrada

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