This was an article I was originally gonna write for Helium, but then I got so involved in and fascinated with it and I spent so much time researching and looking into it that I decided I didn’t want to give up my hard work and effort so they could retain the rights and pay me just $0.10.  Screw Helium.  So instead I'm going to post it here in about 3-4 installments.  Let's see how it goes.

Ah, the allure of the university, the tried and true path of enlightenment, the sure-fire way towards economic and social progress.  When names like Harvard or Stanford or Yale command respect and images of long, flowing formal graduation gowns are imprinted in our psyches, who wouldn’t want to embark on the journey towards the four year Bachelor’s degree, or even beyond?

Quite a few people nowadays, actually.

College is everyone’s knee-jerk answer to the question “How do you become successful?”  I remember it being pounded in me that you had to go to college to be able to do anything, and all I remember from high school was hearing how everybody couldn’t wait to go to college.  Yet, when I got there, within months all I heard about was how everyone couldn’t wait to graduate and get a job or start their life.

College is no guarantee.  9.1% of college graduates are still unemployed, and even the ones who are employed are not guaranteed to get jobs in their desired fields.  Not to mention, not all degrees and fields are guaranteed to generate an income.  Remember, an “average” salary is not the same for all people.  It represents a single point among a range of salaries depending on the particular field.  For instance, the median worker with a degree in counseling psychology earn just $29,000 and those with degrees in early childhood education earn only $36,000.

Where does this hoopla about going to college come from?  Is it part of our great American dream?  I don’t think so.  From a historical perspective, universities were never meant for the masses.  Only a select few people went to college, and it was not an expensive endeavour. At the beginning of the 20th century, fewer than 1,000 colleges with 160,000 students existed in the United States. If we go by the US population in 1900, that’s one in every 475 people! Yet there is enormous pressure to get a college education nowadays.

So where does this bias come from?  Why is a college education so ineffective nowadays?  I’ll look into these issues and more next time.