If, When, and Maybe Not :The Conditional Importance of College by Danielle

If, When, and Maybe Not :The Conditional Importance of College by Danielle - April 2020 Scholarship Essay

“What do you mean you don’t know if you’ll go to college?” Seven-year-old me looked over at my friend in confusion. She shrugged as we continued walking.
“I mean, you don’t have to go to college, and I don’t know if what I’ll want to do will make me need to go to college.”
My young mind struggled to wrap around this. In my house, there was no if you went to college, only when. To me, my friend saying she wasn’t going to college was much akin to saying she aimed to be a high school dropout. I went home, asked my parents about this, and learned that college was not, in fact, required by law; it was just something that many people did in order to make sure their future was secure and they could do what they wanted to. College was not something everyone needed to do, or even necessarily should do. After all, if someone wanted to be a hairstylist, as my friend thought she might, they didn’t need to go to college to reach their goals. This and other experiences changed my view of college. College is very important if it helps a person achieve their dreams, but if not, while there can be other benefits, it is not fundamentally important.
The most clearly important thing about college is that it allows people to achieve their goals. This is certainly true in my own life, where my primary career goal is to be a high school teacher. In order to accomplish this goal, a college degree is essential, as it should be. This situation is similarly true for two of my sisters, one of whom is currently in college studying to become a nurse, and the other, my twin, who wants to be an aerospace engineer. Without college, all three of us would have to wave goodbye to our dreams, so for us and people in our situation, college is extremely important.
While career achievement is obviously important when it comes to college, there are other important provisions of college as well. A college education helps develop complex thought and can empower a person to advocate for themselves. This is seen in voting, where the well-educated make up one of the strongest voting blocs in the United States. Those with more education feel they have the ability to make change in the world, so they often do. Higher education also creates a deeper understanding of the world and can enable greater wonder at it, the importance of which cannot be overstated. Additionally, college can provide financial security, as with my older sister, the first person in her biological family to attend college and the first to break the cycle of poverty, something she attributes to her college education. All of these are key benefits to college that truly can improve a person’s life.
In many ways, then, college is important. It has undeniable benefits in various areas of life. However, college is not important universally, and it does a disservice to students to tell them that it is. Students in my generation often feel pressured into going to college or feel that if they don’t, they are a failure. For many of these students, though, not going to college would be a wiser or equally valuable choice as going to college. For my classmates who want to be mechanics or electricians, it is not important that they go to college. For them, such a course would present a huge bill with few benefits. It would not allow them to do what they love—a trade school or apprenticeship would be more useful in that arena. It would not give them greater financial security, as their chosen trade will do that already. Arguably, the greatest benefit would come in the cognitive development encouraged in college. It should be remembered, however, that college does not have a monopoly on complex-thought development—it can be cultivated in other ways—and that it is quite possible to live a happy, fruitful life even if that skill does not get developed. Therefore, college is not important in the sense that it is needed to live a good, fulfilling, impactful life. It can certainly be a helpful stepping stone along the way, but it is not important for every student.
College is important for many, but not for everyone. It is important for every student to be able to achieve their dreams, so college becomes important for individuals when it helps them do that. Other potential benefits to college should not be ignored, but ultimately, the importance of college does come down to an individual, with that individual’s unique goals, passions, and characteristics. To me, college will always be important—it would be strangely ironic if a future teacher thought otherwise—but my understanding of its universality has changed a good deal since I was seven, a change I am glad to see in myself.