College Is One of The Best Investment

College is the best investment you can make in your life. A college education provides you a better hourly wage or salary, it overall makes it more likely to be employed and gives you more flexibility when it comes to finding a job. Even with the tuition cost and fear of wasting time, college is one of if not the best investments you can make.

To begin on average people who graduated from a four year university and work a salaried position, earned 20,000 more dollars than the people who just have a high school education. For hourly workers who graduated from a four year university there hourly wage is 21.70 for high school graduates there hourly wage is just 15.78, that is a difference of nearly 6 and over a lifetime that 6 dollars can add up.

According to Politifact citing Georgetown University “Over the course of a lifetime, Georgetown University study found that high school graduates would make $1.3 million, while college graduates with a bachelor’s degree would make $2.3 million.These statistics show that not going to college could could cost someone upwards of million dollars. While also making more money the likelihood of a college graduate having a job is much higher.

Next having a college degree makes it more likely you will be employed. According to BLS Current Population Survey and the graph on page 67 of the Springboard book, with just a bachelor degree your chances of being unemployed is 4% which is 2.1% percent below the average unemployment, which is 6.1%. While just having a High school diploma will up your unemployment rate to 7.5%, nearly double the unemployment rate of college graduates and 1.4% above the average. And as you gain more education the chance of you being unemployed drops a master degree drops you to a 3.4% chance of being unemployed, a professional degree lowers your unemployment chance to 2.3% and the lowest unemployment numbers are for doctoral degree which is a degrees that let you practice medicine. This effect also works in reverse as shown before.

Finally having a degree can provide job flexibility what this means is there are multiple types of jobs you can get with that with one degree. An example of that is business administration, no matter what you specialize in a business administration degree can provide you multiple opportunities inside of a corporation. According to CollegeCareerLife.net “Whether the emphasis is on accounting, finance, marketing, or management, a bachelor’s or master’s degree in business administration is the starting point for a wide range of careers that are always in demand.” This quote shows that with a business administration degree there are tons of open doors inside a corporation. There are many other degrees that can provide multiple different job option like engineering,digital design, and computer programming. With these flexible degrees if the job that you start in is not what you expected, you can use your degree to find a new job that you hopefully more enjoyable .

Some common criticism of college is that tuition is just to high and the mountain of debt you accumulate when going through college cancels out the benefits. However if you look at the average student loan debt at 37,172 as said by Forbes, and if you set it up on the average 10 year plan your monthly payment is 309.77. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics the weekly earning of someone who graduated college with a bachelor’s degree is 1189 dollars multiplied over four weeks the monthly earnings of a college graduated with a bachelor’s degree is 4756 dollars.

When you subtract your student loan payment of 309.77 dollar from your monthly earnings you are left with 4446.23 dollars. Next the weekly earning of a high school graduate statistics also found by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, on average a high school graduate makes 718 dollars a week when multiplied by 4 you get 2872 dollars. These number show that even with a student loan payment a college graduate make 1 and half times more than someone with just a high school education.

Next a common reason people say they don’t want to go to college is they don’t know what they want to major in and feel like they will just waste time being there. However according to Bestchoiceschools.com “Sophomore year is a big turning stone in the college timeline, because students need to have a major decided by the end of this year.” This quote shows that you have nearly 2 years while in college to figure out your major. During these two years you can also work on getting other credits you need to graduate. Also in these years you can sit in on class you are interested in taking and learn about them, and learn about the benefits of the classes and the careers that the class feeds into.

In conclusion College is one of the best and most stable investment you can make in your life to improve your quality life with the increase in pay, better job security, and flexibility a college education provides. For all these reason people need to get out there and go to college.

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