Problem with Higher Education in the U.S.
I believe that there are currently many issues regarding the education systems around the world. But as current college student, I believe the education systems in the United States of American alone have numerous issues they need to remedy. One topic related with this I want to discuss is the current systems of “Higher Education” such as universities. Many employers either require or prefer that a potential employee has a college degree. Although this isn’t the case for all occupations in the United States, most higher paying jobs do follow this trend. The problem I have with this is that the cost of attending these institutions can be extremely high. Many attendees can’t afford to pay for this right away so they end up taking out loans to cover the cost. This leads to many people to have potentially tens of thousands of dollars in debt as soon as they graduate from college. Not to mention some professions require graduate school, which typically is more expensive than undergrad. Fellow MGG classmate John Maier included some research he carried out. He writes in his Medium publication, “…As you can see from the poll, just over 48% of the respondents will have, or currently have some levels of student debt” (Maier). This was a survey he carried out asking whether you have student loan debt or will have student loan debt. The survey ended up being about 48% saying yes to the question. Whether that number is alarming or not doesn’t really matter. What matters is that are these debt totals even worth it? What I want to find out is if attending these institutions is even necessary to get a ‘good’ job.
I wonder this because of mainly two things. One being that many people don’t even go into a field in which they received their college degree. Paul Fain, blogger on InsideHigherEd.com wrote, “…After those jobs, however, the report starts to look more like the findings from a study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which found that only 27 percent of college graduates work in a field related to their major.” (Fain). Seeing a statistic that low makes me think that employers look more for what you can accomplish and less of your academic skills. And if that is the case it is completely unnecessary to have people take on all the debt just so that you can see that they started something and was able to go through the process and finish. The second point I wanted to discuss is that right now many of the people who are the ‘higher ups’ grew up in an era in which going to college wasn’t the norm and many people didn’t attend it. These people hold the same jobs in which employers may require potential hires to attend college. These are reasons to how and why I think that higher education needs to be restructured and looked at to find the most useful takeaway from it.
Citations
College students stock photos. (n.d.). Retrieved March 22, 2021, from https://www.dreamstime.com/photos-images/college-students.html
Fain, P. (n.d.). New data Track graduates of six popular majors through their first three jobs. Retrieved March 22, 2021, from https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/08/02/new-data-track-graduates-six-popular-majors-through-their-first-three-jobs#:~:text=After%20those%20jobs%2C%20however%2C%20the,a%20broad%20array%20of%20careers.
Maier, J. (2021, March 09). The accessibility of higher education. Retrieved March 22, 2021, from https://medium.com/the-right-to-an-education/the-accessibility-of-higher-education-561d628fe8fe
