Starting as early as elementary school, students are told that they have to go to a four-year college to be successful, but college may not be as essential as its made out to be.
Right now, the biggest problem with universities is how expensive they are. In the 1980s, students were able to pay off their entire tuition by working a minimum wage job. Since then, the cost of college has increase by about 260%. Now, two thirds of students require some sort of financial aid to afford their tuition. Most of these students aren’t able to pay off these student loans while still in school so, 73% of people who needed financial aid in college enter the workforce already in debt. As of 2015, the student-loan debt was at $1.3 trillion. For most, this debt follows them for ten years until they are able to completely pay them off. Because of all of these costs, 57% of prospective students believe that a college degree is not worth the financial trouble. So why even go?
A main argument for college is that a degree is necessary to get a job, but that just isn’t true. College classes do a good job of teaching what subjects are but overall, they don’t teach how to apply concepts into the real world or how they will be used in a job. Even after getting a degree from a university, no company is going to hire you for a high level position right off the bat. In most companies, entry level positions like secretaries and assistants, are open to anyone that submits an application with at least a high school education. Regardless, in the future, it’s projected that the need for jobs that don’t require a college degree will continue to grow.
A better alternative to expensive four-year college is a job specific trade school or apprenticeship. With these trade schools students don’t need to spend thousands of dollars extra on classes they don’t need to take. Though most people usually associate these schools with professions, there are many different trade schools covering a variety of subjects. For example, in Omaha there is the Omaha Code School, a 16 week program who’s main goal is to get students hirable as computer programmers and software engineers. The creator of the school, Sumeet Jain, promises that graduates will leave with the skill set required for jobs paying a median of $80k. Schools like this are cheaper, less time consuming, and more practical for the workforce than four-year colleges. Even if the field you want to go in to doesn’t have any sort of trade school, high school internships and two year colleges still offer a cheaper alternative to four year universities