The Past & Present of College
The talk about college has become vastly different from what it once was, and with that so has people’s attitude towards it. College was once an essential part of going forward in one’s chosen career, now there has become a broad gap between either needing a degree and even not going to college whatsoever.
Based on statistics from the Education Data Initiative, in the last year college enrollment has increased by 2.6%. However, in a total of 14 years, enrollment to postsecondary education has declined by 11.61%. Which makes some wonder how wide the gap is going to college between the early 2000’s and the later 2000’s.
What’s the difference?
Well, if there has been such a decline in college enrollment, why has it happened? The simplest answer to that would be debt. Most people are scared to go to college because of student loans and the fear of being buried in debt before even having a chance to have a stable job.
Based on the Education Data Initiative, the average American student leaves college with more than $35,000 in debt, just to obtain a four-year bachelor’s degree in 2025. Whereas in the early 2000’s the average college tuition for a bachelor’s degree was merely $21,000. In just 20 years, the standard four-year college tuition increased by a whole 132.75%.
However, all of this debt doesn’t just cause harm. It can be good too. It might take $30,000 of student loans to get that bachelor’s degree, but looking at it in the long run, people with a bachelor’s make a million dollars more than a person without one. Making student loans look like good debt, a long-time investment that will end in a good result is what a lot of people forget.
While to most people the idea of student loans in return for 4 years at college may sound worth it, student loans aren’t all that easy to pay off. To start with, most people take out student loans for tuition which on average just counts for around $37,000 but you have a lot more expenses than just tuition.
In college, you have to pay for a lot more than just tuition, you’ve got housing, food, transportation, and so much more to worry about. And while there could be a chance you’re provided those things the first year or maybe even the two, that still leaves another two years where you have to provide necessities like that for yourself.
Most people take out loans in later years to cover for necessities like housing, but this puts themselves deeper down the debt pool, giving themselves a harder time having to pay it back. While the average payback time for student loans is 10-20 years, most people are stuck with student loans for a much longer time. Some even get stuck paying for their whole lives.
A fourth-year college student from Stanford, who wishes to stay anonymous, was asked, “Do you believe that college has become increasingly expensive, causing most students to rely on student loans?”
“I personally think that college has become increasingly expensive from what it once was, but student loans aren’t always the answer. As a soon to graduate college student, I always tell all high school students to try their best for any grants/scholarships/financial aid they can get. I was able to get some financial aid myself, which really helped me. But a few of my college friends haven’t even graduated yet and are insanely buried in debt. Most of our entire student body is, so yes, the expense rate of colleges does drive students to learn more on student loans but there’s always something you can try and do as another way to pay for college.”
As a person who was able to get most of their college education paid for by grants and financial aid, this Stanford student isn’t very much worried about student loans or having life-long debt. But their friends, who already have to stress about how to pay back their loans are now in a very sticky situation of trying to graduate but also get a job to start paying those repayment bills.
College Majors
It clearly takes a lot of money, hard work, and dedication to go to college, but what do people go to college to do? There are countless numbers of majors in college, you could study almost anything from music to engineering to religion.
The idea of college has now become a place where one can be whoever they want, however they want to. The most popular major in the whole USA is business. Which honestly is almost so perfect since America is known for its endless possibilities. And the business world, well that is just a vast land of “anything is possible”.
Despite business being the most popular college major in the US, only 19% of college graduates actually have a bachelor’s degree in business. Despite that 19%, there is another 13% of degrees in health, 6.5% in biological and biomedical sciences. That only just makes 38.5% of all bachelor’s degrees, so where does the other 61.5% of degrees go?
Well there are a lot of people majoring in degrees that contribute less to society or have a subsidiary impact on the state of their civilization. These are the same degrees that people get and then end up not having the opportunity to get a job in their chosen major or field of career.
A Business & Finance teacher here at Pitman High, Mr.Toste was asked, “Should colleges limit the amount of courses they have down to the most important one? Ex. Doctor, engineering, science, etc.?”
“Yes, I do believe this should happen. The idea with a university is to develop a well-rounded individual, but there are probably at least 25% of classes in college that you probably don’t need to take, in my opinion, thus an individual would not need a full 4 years to finish their concentrated study in a particular major.”
Based off of Mr.Toste’s answer, he finds it reasonable that the normal 4-year term for a degree, could and should be cut down by a little. Eliminating all of the unnecessary classes that don’t help you in obtaining your chosen degree.
The Bad & Good
Although there seems to be a lot of negatives when it comes to deciding whether you should go to college, deciding if you should apply for student loans, or decide if your major is worth it. There is a bright side to it all too, there’s the college experience, being able to study your passions, find new life experiences, get a look at the real world that you could and should consider.
Sure, most people would say that having student loans sucks and that it’s hard for them to pay it back, but money shouldn’t be the only thing keeping you from something as important as education. In the end, if student loans seem absolutely out of the question, you could always go to community college, a junior college, or maybe just not to college until you have the means for it.
Deciding on college life is hard, picking what to pursue and potentially getting a career in that chosen field is hard, not knowing if applying for student loans is worth it, is hard. But these are the types of decisions that are supposed to be hard and difficult because deciding how your future would potentially go is a demanding task.