How Essential Is A College Education?
With more and more careers requiring advanced education, a college degree can be critical to your success in today’s workforce. Research indicates that earning a degree can have a significant and expansive impact on your life. It also has the potential to help you positively impact your family—and the world. Here are 7 reasons why college could be important for you.
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Contents
Is the university education is essential?
A University Education is Necessary in American Society According to John Spayde, author of ‘Learning in the Key of Life,’ a university education is a defining role in the well-being and success of people in today’s society.
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How important is a college degree in 2022?
Access to Higher-Paying Jobs – It’s not just any job that a bachelor’s degree can give you access to — it can increase your access to jobs that pay higher. According to NCES, the higher the educational attainment, the higher the median earnings. It goes without saying that going to college in 2022 can help prime you for a high-paying job in the future.
The median annual earnings of bachelor’s degree holders aged 25 to 34 amount to $55,700. NCES adds that the fact that those with an undergraduate degree tend to make more money is consistent when a nine-year time period is considered. Due to this, it’s safe to assume that you will earn more than those with a high school diploma or some college but no bachelor’s degree if you attend college in 2022 and graduate between 2026 and 2028.
Meanwhile, here are the median annual earnings of employed individuals from 25 to 34 years old whose educational attainment is lower than a bachelor’s degree.
| HIGHEST EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT | MEDIAN ANNUAL EARNINGS |
| Associate degree | $40,000 |
| Some college but no bachelor’s degree | $39,700 |
| High school diploma | $35,000 |
| Less than high school | $29,300 |
Earlier, we checked out a table of occupations requiring a bachelor’s degree and the projected annual job openings from 2020 to 2030 for them. Now, let’s take a look at the annual median wage for each one:
| OCCUPATION | MEDIAN ANNUAL WAGE |
| Computer and information systems managers | $151,150 |
| Financial managers | $134,180 |
| Software developers and software quality assurance analysts and testers | $110,140 |
| Medical and health services managers | $104,280 |
| General and operations managers | $103,650 |
| Computer system analysts | $93,730 |
| Mechanical engineers | $90,160 |
| Industrial engineers | $88,950 |
| Civil engineers | $88,570 |
| Management analysts | $87,660 |
| Network and computer systems administrators | $84,810 |
| Registered nurses | $75,330 |
| Accountants and auditors | $73,560 |
| Market research analysts and marketing specialists | $65,810 |
| Securities, commodities and financial services sales agents | $64,770 |
| Human resources specialists | $63,490 |
| Secondary school teachers (excluding career/technical education) | $62,870 |
| Public relations specialists | $62,810 |
| Elementary school teachers (excluding special education) | $60,940 |
| Clinical laboratory technologists and technicians | $54,180 |
| Child, family and school social workers | $48,430 |
| Substance abuse, behavioral disorder and mental health counselors | $47,660 |
| Coaches and scouts | $36,330 |
The return on investment (ROI) of a college education is something that you should take into account when deciding whether or not you should head to college after high school or apply for a job. Simply put, it’s the amount of money you will make as a part of the workforce minus college-related costs.
And for this particular task, lifetime earnings have to step into the picture. While we were discussing the cost of college in 2022, we briefly mentioned the lifetime earnings of bachelor’s degree holders — $2,268,000, according to CEW. Needless to say, a bachelor’s degree can give you the opportunity to accumulate more money in your entire life than people with lower educational attainment.
Here’s a table demonstrating the median lifetime earnings of individuals whose educational attainment is lower than a bachelor’s degree, according to CEW, which, by the way, is a research facility at Georgetown University:
| HIGHEST EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT | MEDIAN LIFETIME EARNINGS |
| Associate degree | $1,727,000 |
| Some college but no bachelor’s degree | $1,547,000 |
| High school diploma | $1,304,000 |
| Less than high school | $973,000 |
Are college educations valuable?
Is college necessary for a successful career? – Yes and no. College opens up opportunities both intellectually and socially that you wouldn’t have otherwise. You’re surrounded by a network of students and professionals from all walks of life. There’s a good chance one might be your connection to your future career.
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Why college degrees are losing value?
10+ Disruptive Factors Transforming the World of Education and Learning — Consequences, Opportunities, Tools – In the previous chapter I have given you an overall perspective of the reasons why I think that the world of education and learning is being deeply transformed by a number of different factors, and how curation is playing a huge catalytic and operational role in this transformation.
What is this change about?What is bringing it?What consequences and opportunities is this change giving way toWhich are the tools that enable this change?
” The value of traditional CVs and resumes is rapidly fading as the value of educational certifications and degrees in the workplace is gradually diminishing.” (Source: Epic 2020 ) The overall value of university and college degrees are decreasing because:
degrees are no longer a guarantee of a getting a job degrees are no longer a guarantee of a better paythere is a growing number of alternative, free or low-cost learning paths that can be taken to learn new skills and earn oneself a living information learned during college study is not always useful to actual work demands many college/university degree programs offer little or no exposure to actual work practices time (and money) is sacrificed to obtain an academic certification which could be instead used to learn on-the-job or to develop one’s own business lots of time is needed to pay back loans obtained to get such degrees and certificationsthere is a fast growing number of paid jobs and activities that do not require a university degree,
Outside of traditional “professionals” as doctors and engineers, companies recruiting new people are looking more for “skills and experience” than for degrees and certificates. Fact : (in the US) 17 million college graduates have jobs that do not require a college degree.
Source: InsideHigherEd ) That’s ” over 30 percent of the working college graduates in the U.S. ” The diploma serves as a screening device that allows businesses to narrow down the applicant pool quickly and almost without cost to the employer, but with a huge financial cost to the individual earning the diploma (often at least $100,000), and to society at large in the form of public subsidies.” (Source: InsidehigherEd ) ” diplomas are a highly expensive and inefficient screening device used by employers who are afraid to test potential employee skills” (Source: InsideHigherEd ) Apparently, it’s the method that doesn’t work anymore.
Certifications and diplomas prove little about a person skills and abilities in the real world. Today, the job marketplace requires people who can “think”. People who can come up with creative solutions to unexpected problems, people who are prepared to be continuously challenged by new discoveries and innovations but who can discern which ones are relevant and immediately useful for their goals, and people who can recognize patterns and relationships across industries and disciplines to help them find new and better ways to achieve their objectives.
Curation offers a practical and immediately usable approach to help new learners train themselves in developing and mastering such very skills. Last but not least, it should be also noted that an increasing number of alternatives to academic-based traditional certification systems are emerging. These non-academic new certification systems have the power to dent into universities dearest asset: the lock between content being taught and the test/assessments that are supposed to certify a student competence on it.
These alternative certification systems are likely to provide alternative means for many individuals to demonstrate and be valued for their skills without a need to attend academic courses, to pay expensive tuition fees, to purchase new textbooks, and to pay for exam/certification costs.
- The piles of student loans are due largely to the fact that the cost of a college degree has been going up much faster than people’s incomes.
- And that has raised the specter that we might be living through a ” higher-education bubble,” in which Americans are irrationally borrowing money to spend more on college than it’s actually worth.
We’ve just endured two huge bubbles, which sent the value of stocks and then homes to ridiculous levels, so the theory isn’t implausible. Of course, a college-education bubble wouldn’t look exactly like a typical asset bubble, because you can’t flip a college degree the way you can flip a stock, or even a home.
But what bubble believers are really saying is that young people today are radically overestimating the economic value of going to college, and that many of them would be better off doing something else with their time and money.” Source: New Yorker (2011) Check also: What’s a Diploma Worth “Much of the argument for formal education rests on statistics indicating that people with college and graduate degrees earn more,
But those statistics suffer an important and rarely heeded bias: “The problem is that this statistic is based on long-term data, gathered from a period of moderate loan debt, easy employability, and annual increases in the value of a college degree. These conditions have been the case for college grads for decades.
Given the dramatically changed circumstances grads today face, we already know that the trends for debt, employability, and the value of a degree have all degraded, and we cannot assume the trend toward greater lifetime earnings will hold true for the current generation. This is a critical omission from media coverage.
The fact is we do not know. There’s absolutely no guarantee it will hold true.” Brain Pickings, 2013 http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/05/13/dont-go-back-to-school-kio-stark/ ‘ The skills which employers need can be developed in many ways, ‘ ‘There is strong evidence that students with work experience of some description are now more likely to get a job and will be more successful once in work.
This is why many employers are increasingly investing in internship and work experience programmes.’ And although this has always been the case with certain sectors, the economic crisis has inevitably had an impact on the situation — albeit in a way which neither employees nor employers could have predicted.
‘ The recession has shown many employers that a school leaver with experience can add just as much, if not more, than a graduate with a degree,’. Metro (2014) http://metro.co.uk/2014/03/17/relax-students-employers-dont-care-where-you-go-to-university-any-more-4575722/ Sal Khan shares his plan to turn struggling students into scholars by helping them master concepts at their own pace.
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Why is education an essential?
Education is a process of expediting learning, acquiring knowledge, values, and virtue. It contributes to the development of better people around the globe. It is more of an enduring method in which people gain information, skills, and ethics. There is a narrow line that runs between learning and education.
- We learn from everything we come across, from birth to death.
- On the contrary, we get educated at a certain point in our life with imparted knowledge.
- Our learning evolves with personal experience, which bears no rules, whereas schools or universities impart education based on particular standards.
- The standards are clear and measurable goals drew on skills and knowledge that children must obtain.
These skills prepare the children for the future, work, and life.
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Why is education an essential right?
Why does it matter? – Education reduces poverty, decreases social inequalities, empowers women and helps each individual reach their full potential. It also brings significant economic returns for a country and helps societies to achieve lasting peace and sustainable development. Education is key to achieving all other human rights.
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Can you live without a college degree?
You don’t always need a degree to get ahead. Wondering how to be successful without college? Thankfully, there are many ways to make it big. Here are some tips. – College can be an amazing experience and completing a degree can feel like the proudest moment of a person’s life.
- But the student experience isn’t for everyone.
- Some people don’t want to study full-time at a campus university, others don’t want to study at all.
- If you’re put off by the high fees that campus colleges ask for, or wondering how to have a good life without college, read on.
- The good news is that it’s still possible to be successful without a degree.
Here are twelve great ways for how to be successful without college.
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Is college life important in life?
It gives us more exposure and also makes us more confident. Our teachers act more like friends in college, whereas in school they’re like our mentors. Most importantly, college life gives us various challenges than our school life.
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Is university education a golden key for a happy life?
If the author focuses university education on a positive side, a university may be a golden key to open the triple doors, namely, individual happiness, social welfare, and national prosperity. university is indeed a golden key for a happy life.
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Is a college education still the best value for one’s money?
1. College Graduates Earn More Than Non-Graduates – Despite the rising cost of post-secondary education, a college degree still pays off for the majority of graduates. On average, those with a bachelor’s degree earn significantly more than their peers with only a high school diploma.
- Just how much more? The median salary for workers with high school diplomas is $38,792, and they have an average unemployment rate of 3.7% as of 2019, according to an analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data by Northeastern University.
- By contrast, the median salary for workers with bachelor’s degrees is $64,896, and their unemployment rate is just 2.2% on average.
Over the course of their careers, college graduates can earn hundreds of thousands more than those who don’t attend college.
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What are the 3 main sources used to help students pay for college?
There are 3 different types of funding opportunities a student may look for, namely: Scholarship. Bursary. Study Loans.
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