Is College Worth It? There are many reasons why a person may attend college. Some go for the opportunity to get employment; that through their hard work and money spent, they will end up in a high-paying field that will help repay their debts. In a different group, there are those who go to obtain a higher level knowledge, to better understand the world they live in and learn how to communicate with people that they would normally never would. Both of these ideas are beneficial in their own ways, but the consistent question that is brought up is not only how to fund the often-pricey endeavor that college is, but also how to obtain success once people leave college. In short, this debate comes down to a simple question; “Is College Worth It?” While this question generalizes much thought, it can’t be debated that there are points on both sides of the spectrum. While colleges may be facing problems with tuition and apprenticeship , they still offer the expansion of knowledge and the ability for people to better understand the world they live in. According to Michael Roth, President of Wesleyan University, in his essay “Learning as Freedom”, education is forever changing, and that people should be taught how to process information in order to adapt better to the future.
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“Given the pace of change, it is impossible… to know what the world will be like in a couple of decades, so schools first and foremost should teach us habits of learning.” This sentiment reflects an important idea about higher education that is often forgotten; that higher education helps students better understand how learning works, and in turn how functions of the world work. John Dewey elaborated on this point in his essay entitled “Education for Critical Citizenship” when he stated that the only way to advance human society is“(to) make the conditions of life such that all will learn in the process of living, (and this) is the finest product of schooling" (p. 56). In this quote, Dewey hopes to say that education at its core is a way to help students realize that through every decision they make in life that they are in some way learning. College in that sense is an expansion on that point. As Michael Roth said later on in “Learning as Freedom”, higher education is “The key...to develop habits of mind that allow students to keep learning, even as they acquire skills to get things done.” Communication is another increasingly important part of a higher education. Many organizations, most notably Office for Standards in Education in the United Kingdom, have continually said that persons who continue their education after the state-required minimum have a greater hold on the ability to communicate their thoughts and ideas. According to this organization (mostly known as Ofsted), persons with college education normally had “Good communication and professional development. (This) Engagement with staff led to changes that were sustainable rather than being short-term, ‘quick fix’ solutions.” The idea of education improving modes of communication is not one that has been around for a short period of time; Philosopher and Parliament member John Stuart Mill was one of the first to bring up the topic in his 1860 work “On Liberty”, more specifically the chapter Of Liberty of Thought and Discussion. As Mill goes on to conclude about education “to bring a child into existence without a fair prospect of being able, not only to provide food for its body, but instruction and training for its mind, is a moral crime, both against the unfortunate offspring and against society.” With this point, Mill goes on to say that Communication is born from learning, and that the only way we can truly communicate with each other is to attain this higher level of thought and education. This idea of higher thought does have tremendous drawbacks, namely the high tuition costs that are causing many people to reconsider the benefits of a higher education. Depending on the institution, costs can range up to $65,000 a year. While scholarships and grants are available, they are often hard to come by depending on class, race, and gender, and often students resort to taking out loans to finance their education. Often this leads to massive amounts of debt (up to 1.2 billion dollars
“Given the pace of change, it is impossible… to know what the world will be like in a couple of decades, so schools first and foremost should teach us habits of learning.” This sentiment reflects an important idea about higher education that is often forgotten; that higher education helps students better understand how learning works, and in turn how functions of the world work. John Dewey elaborated on this point in his essay entitled “Education for Critical Citizenship” when he stated that the only way to advance human society is“(to) make the conditions of life such that all will learn in the process of living, (and this) is the finest product of schooling" (p. 56). In this quote, Dewey hopes to say that education at its core is a way to help students realize that through every decision they make in life that they are in some way learning. College in that sense is an expansion on that point. As Michael Roth said later on in “Learning as Freedom”, higher education is “The key...to develop habits of mind that allow students to keep learning, even as they acquire skills to get things done.” Communication is another increasingly important part of a higher education. Many organizations, most notably Office for Standards in Education in the United Kingdom, have continually said that persons who continue their education after the state-required minimum have a greater hold on the ability to communicate their thoughts and ideas. According to this organization (mostly known as Ofsted), persons with college education normally had “Good communication and professional development. (This) Engagement with staff led to changes that were sustainable rather than being short-term, ‘quick fix’ solutions.” The idea of education improving modes of communication is not one that has been around for a short period of time; Philosopher and Parliament member John Stuart Mill was one of the first to bring up the topic in his 1860 work “On Liberty”, more specifically the chapter Of Liberty of Thought and Discussion. As Mill goes on to conclude about education “to bring a child into existence without a fair prospect of being able, not only to provide food for its body, but instruction and training for its mind, is a moral crime, both against the unfortunate offspring and against society.” With this point, Mill goes on to say that Communication is born from learning, and that the only way we can truly communicate with each other is to attain this higher level of thought and education. This idea of higher thought does have tremendous drawbacks, namely the high tuition costs that are causing many people to reconsider the benefits of a higher education. Depending on the institution, costs can range up to $65,000 a year. While scholarships and grants are available, they are often hard to come by depending on class, race, and gender, and often students resort to taking out loans to finance their education. Often this leads to massive amounts of debt (up to 1.2 billion dollars