Emma Fried, B&W Staff
The steady and dramatic increase in college tuition, paired with the growing number of people finding financial success without attending college, has resulted in a reexamination of whether or not a college education is worth the price.
This semester I am interning at Lehigh’s Communications and Public Affairs office, and one of my daily tasks is to research news articles for information regarding private universities. I begin each day in the office skimming through articles on website such as The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times and many others. I constantly see headlines that say things like, “Millennial College Graduates: Young, Educated, and Jobless,” “Reflections on the Underemployment of College Graduates” and “How Much More Do College Graduates Earn Than Non-College Graduates?” I have found that the majority of these articles ask the same question. Is college worth it?
I probably read about three or four articles on this topic weekly. They all suggest that the amount of money students spend on college is not justified by the amount they make upon graduation. They note that college graduates are not being hired at the rate they used to be and may end up finding themselves in the same jobs as those without college degrees.
While reading these articles, I am reminded of all the college dropouts that turned out just fine. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and even Ellen DeGeneres and Brad Pitt. I constantly question my decision to attend a prestigious, private and expensive university, when so many people who don’t graduate college often end up just fine.
However, despite the high cost of college tuition and the fact that a college diploma is not a ticket to automatic career success, evidence still suggests that those with a college degree still end up better off.
According to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2014, high school graduates earn only about 62 percent of what college graduates end up earning, proving that, in general, there is a financial benefit to obtaining a college education. Furthermore, the study reported by U.S. News found that the gap between college and non-college grads steadily widened for each successive generation in the latter half of the 20th century.
Along with the financial benefits, I believe that those who are fortunate enough to receive a higher education should do so without hesitation because of the ways in which a college education, particularly a liberal arts degree, can benefit an individual.
Many of the articles that question the value of a college degree offer trade schools as a solution, suggesting that students should master a particular field in order to be qualified for the corresponding career, rather than receive a liberal arts education.
By suggesting students attend a trade school rather than pay the high price of a college or university, these articles are failing to acknowledge the ways in which a liberal arts degree not only teaches students how to learn, write and think critically, but how it diversifies a person’s general knowledge on a variety of topics. Thus, making them more desirable for employment.
In learning only one specific field with the intention of finding career success, one is missing out on learning the things that make them interesting and well-rounded. Lehigh must recognize this too, which is why all students, including those in the business school, are required to satisfy a number of humanities and social science credits in order to graduate.
According to Iseek.org, “The value of a liberal arts education goes far beyond its economic value…In many ways, a liberal arts education is education for life. It prepares graduates who can adapt and thrive in an ever-changing world.”
College is expensive and despite a degree, graduates struggle to find a job post graduation. Nevertheless, over the long run, the earnings of college graduates still surpass those with only a high school diploma. Furthermore, the information learned in a trade school is not tantamount to the knowledge gained from a college degree. Skills learned in trade schools eventually become obsolete and younger people are always graduating with more up-to-date knowledge of the field. In contrast, the skills learned from a well-rounded education will help a person for life and can enable an individual to persevere in many fields, rather than just one. Despite the high cost of college tuition, the multiple benefits of receiving a college degree and gaining a well-rounded education cannot be forgotten.
Comment policy
Comments posted to The Brown and White website are reviewed by a moderator before being approved. Incendiary speech or harassing language, including comments targeted at individuals, may be deemed unacceptable and not published. Spam and other soliciting will also be declined.
The Brown and White also reserves the right to not publish entirely anonymous comments.
1 Comment
The article is well written, but I have a few comments to make. Please understand I am not trying to debunk the article or argue its merit, but rather, to delve deeper into some of the assumptions, arguments, and conclusion to see if everything holds (I have not done any research myself except anecdotal evidence, but would like to throw it out there just for everyone to consider).
First, the article suggests that the value of a college education, particularly a liberal arts education from a prestigious (and expensive) college, is worth the cost of tuition over a trade school where a student would specialize in a certain field. Arguments are made that the liberal arts educated person would be able to adapt to changes in the career landscape throughout his life, but that a trade-school specialized person would not. This assumes that someone who studied a trade (and there is a very wide range of trades out there) would not continue education nor be able to adapt to any changes to the job marketplace in the future.
Second, I cannot argue the value of a liberal arts education that is beyond its economic value, because that value is subjective to each individual, but I would not assume that one cannot obtain the same “well rounded-ness” from means other than an expensive and prestigious college. For example, many community colleges or state colleges that are much more tuition-friendly can offer the same intangible value of well-rounded-ness at a much lower entry cost. In my opinion, one of the few benefits of obtaining a liberal arts education from a prestigious school IS the economic value, i.e. possibly better employment prospects.
Third, in my opinion, the article isn’t specific enough with regards to the data collected to reach the conclusion that it did – that the high cost of tuition over trade schools is worth the difference. It makes the argument that there is both economic AND intrinsic value from a college education (in general) over a trade school education, but only uses the intrinsic value of liberal arts education over trade school education to reach that conclusion. I would like to see a comparison of the ECONOMIC (tangible) value of a liberal arts education compared to that of a trade school education separated from general college education. I.e., what are the costs and employment prospects and earnings of people with only liberal arts educations vs. people with only a trade school education?
If after doing this research, the findings may, in fact, prove the conclusion correct, that a college education, whether liberal arts OR STEM, individually offer more value over one’s lifetime compared to a trade school education. Or it may show that a liberal arts education doesn’t offer any economic benefit over a trade school education, but that this isn’t apparent when all college fields are combined due to the large differences in economic benefits between STEM fields and trade schools.