Should Everyone Go To College?

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Going to college is a big decision for a person to make. Determining whether or not it’s a smart choice for you is even harder. There are many factors to take into considering when deciding if college is a smart choice for you, one of those being the cost and how you are going to pay for it. Stephanie Owen and Isabel Sawhill wrote the article, “Should everyone go to college?” which explained in detail the fields of study have a bigger return on investment (ROI) and how unless you were in one of these STEM fields which are: science, technology, engineering, and math the ROI was pretty much moot. Owen and sawhill stated that “the highest paid major is engineering, followed by computers and math” (215) with the lowest major being education, followed …show more content…
I don’t think focusing on the highest paying job should be a factor when deciding if I should go to college or not. When I decided to go to college I didn’t think about making money or what job was in high demand, I thought about my wants in my future and where I would be happiest. In Owen and Sawhill’s article they mentioned those “Non-monetary” benefits and one of them was job satisfaction. I don’t want to be stuck in a job miserable my whole life just because it’s a high paying job. If I went to school to be miserable in my job that right there is the biggest waste of money in the world because not only would I suffer but the quality of my work would suffer, My happiness would obviously suffer and if I’m not happy my relationship would suffer and so on until I hit rock bottom. All of those “non-monetary” benefits that Owen and Sawhill mention are like dominos; when one gets knocked down the others inevitably follow. Instead of choosing to attend college based on what job is making the most money, I chose to come to college to broaden my intellect and work towards something I will be happy to do the rest of my life and to help me grow as a person. Liz Addison’s article “Two years Are Better than Four” refers to college as “America’s hidden public service gem” (257) and she’s right. If it wasn’t for community college a lot of people wouldn’t be able to get an education. Not only is community college easy to get into, but the cost to attend is cheap and there are many financial aid programs that help students who don’t have money for college go and giving more people an opportunity to prepare them for the future. According to Addison, “Some students, from many backgrounds, would never breathe the college experience if it were not for the community college” (258) and she’s right. Many people

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