If you’re thinking of going to college then you might be wondering whether or not it is worth 4 years of your life.
This post will show you a number of reasons whether or not it is worth it for you.
So, is college worth 4 years of my life? College can give you better job opportunities, teach you to be more disciplined and give you better critical thinking skills. However, it largely depends on the major that you want to get, the career that you want to get and the college that you want to go to.
There are actually a number of reasons that college can or cannot be worth the time and there are a number of things that you might want to consider.
It will give you better job opportunities
The main reason that college can be worth it is that it can provide you with better job opportunities.
Over a 40-year working life bachelors degree holders are expected to make 66% more than those without a bachelors degree. This means that getting a college degree should help to give you a better quality of life over the long run.
However, this largely depends on the degree that you want to get. Some degrees will give you very good job opportunities upon graduation. Whereas, some degrees will not put you in much of a better position than if you had have worked straight out of high school.
When deciding on going to college and the degree that you would want to get it would be important to consider the job prospects that it provides. You can look at this website to see how well the different degrees pay.
It will teach you to be more disciplined
Getting through college will require that you are disciplined.
This is because you’ll need some self-discipline in order to keep track of homework in each of your classes, study, prepare for exams and to look after yourself outside of the classroom.
This is a quality that can help you in other areas of your life and it is something that employers will want to see.
It will give you more critical thinking skills
Another thing that a college degree can help with is giving you better critical thinking skills.
To get a college degree it will be necessary to distill large amounts of information to make sense of it and to be able to explain it. This can help you in everyday life and at work when you will need to be able to make sense of non-trivial things quickly.
Companies want to be able to employ people that they can leave alone and expect to figure out issues by themselves. This is something that a college degree can be a signal of.
It is more enjoyable than high school
People that have a hard time in high school or they don’t enjoy it often avoid college because they think that it will be the same. However, college is better than high school in many ways.
Ways that college is better than high school can include:
- The other students generally want to be there
- The students are less disruptive
- The professors are generally experts in their fields
- You have more freedom
- You can choose your classes and major
- You can choose the professor and class times (usually)
You will learn a lot outside of class
Another reason that college can be worth 4 years of your time is that you will learn a lot outside of the classroom as well.
College will be the first time living without their parents for many people. This can help them to learn how to live by their own means before having to go out into the real world where they will have to worry about making money as well.
Consider the field that you want to enter
Whether or not college would be worth it for you will largely depend on the field that you want to enter.
There are many fields, such as engineering, where it will be necessary to get a college degree in that field in order to get a job in it. If you want to enter one of these fields then the payoff of getting the degree will be much more apparent.
However, in other fields, such as software engineering, getting a college degree is not as necessary. Many tech companies will now accept people without college degrees as long as they can show that they are capable of doing the work. Before deciding on getting the degree it would help you to consider whether or not your field requires a college degree.
Many people do not end up graduating
According to NCES, the graduation rate at colleges with open admissions policies only had a 6-year graduation rate of 32%. Whereas, colleges that admitted less than 25% of applicants had an acceptance rate of 88%.
This means that many people do not end up graduating from college especially at the less selective schools. Not graduating from college can be very risky since you’ll still have a lot of the debt but your earning ability won’t have improved. Before going to college it would be worthwhile to make sure that you fully intend to see it through.
You might not be able to get a job after
Another thing to consider is that getting a college degree doesn’t guarantee that you will get a job at the end of it. Many people graduate from college and are unable to find jobs.
This is one reason that it is important to take the time to research the job prospects of the degree that you are thinking of getting. It is also why it is important to try and get internships when you are in college.
