When the recession hit, many high school graduates became convinced that going to college was a better option than trying their luck at entering a lackluster job market.
Recent college enrollment rates released by the Department of Labor, however, suggest this tendency has been shifting. In 2012, the rates of high school graduates enrolling in college lowered for men from 64.6 to 61.3 percent, and for women from 72.3 to 71.3 percent, according to The Wall Street Journal.
While these numbers seem to indicate high school graduates are becoming more confident in their ability to find work straight out of high school, the unemployment rates do not suggest it has become much easier - 7.7 percent of the United States remains unemployed, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The hope would be that as more recent grads are choosing not to go to college, they would be entering the workforce - helping employment. The percentage of 16-24-year-olds unemployed, however, has increased by 9 percent.
These numbers signify that it is becoming more difficult for people without college degrees to find work. A college education is designed to provide many things beyond mere profession training, and as these rates suggest, the value of a degree is increasing.
The availability of jobs for people with just a high school degree is diminishing, and the trope inserted into the modern American social understanding has become increasingly true - that a college education is not just beneficiary but practically necessary.
We all know people who have not completed college for whatever reason. But what we need to be aware of is our own level of cognizance over how treating our education affects us. We need to become engaged in our own journey in a way that recognizes our education is what we choose to make of it. It is about more than just feeding the statistics.
The numbers reflect what is going on in the world outside the university campus. But the statistics don't address one thing. They don't address the skills and virtues you must develop in the course of earning an undergraduate education.
Columbia University Professor of English Andrew Delbanco wrote a book titled College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be, in which he extols the advantages of going to college. He references Thomas Jefferson's proclamation that an educated citizenry is best to govern itself. He points out the average college-educated individual is likely to make a million dollars more over the course of his or her lifetime than the average non-college-educated individual. Perhaps most importantly, he discusses the importance of how the college experience leaves you well practiced in dealing with options.
It is the experience you gain from having to travel through a bureaucratic web a time or two, having to plan out your schedule and decide what classes you want to take and seeking out clubs and organizations on campus you want to get involved with. Each of these examples and more can develop an understanding of how to deal with options when presented, but also, how to seek out options when they seem elusive.
It is the attitude you develop over the course of a college experience, in which you must make countless midcourse corrections, that helps you learn how to face challenges over the course of your life.
As you go on and reflect upon the ways you maneuvered around the college system, you will figure out that the ways you did it can be applied just about anywhere else.
These are the skills college can give you, and they may help you figure out how to find and keep work in the long run because you will be better equipped to handle all the possible options. The opportunities increase greatly with the qualifications that come with that piece of paper some refer to as a degree.
Make sure to get one, and if you do, think about the process of how you're getting it along the way.
Email: editorial@ubspectrum.com
