The Question Worth Answering by Danielle

The Question Worth Answering by Danielle - April 2020 Scholarship Essay

Do I believe attending college is important? Yes, of course I do. Why else would so many people go to college and spend so much money doing so? Whether college is important is hardly a matter of debate, the true question is why. Why is college important? To understand this, we must answer the question, “Why do people do it?” Thus, I asked myself three related questions: Why do I want to go to college? Why might other people want to go to college? Why does society want people to go to college?
There have been a lot of questions so far, so let’s get to some answers. I want to go to college because I want to further my education. I want to learn new things and more things about the things I already know. Put simply, I want to know more. I could learn these things elsewhere of course, but I don’t think that I would. I don’t have the discipline for self education, and would, therefore, need the aid of an institution to keep me accountable. I also acknowledge that having a degree would be a great help in convincing people I know what I’m talking about once I’ve learned more. Getting a job would certainly be easier because my employers would know that I am competent in a specified field or, at the very least, well educated. I want to be well educated, and I want people to know I am well educated. Thus, I want to go to college.
Now, why might other people want to attend college? Not everyone is so interested in the pursuit of knowledge. They go to college because there are better jobs waiting for them after college. It has been statistically proven that college pays for itself in the long run. Therefore, people may want to go to college to make more money. People may also go to college in order to pursue a career they might not otherwise be able to pursue. If you wanted to be a teacher, for example, you would need a degree to assure parents that you were well informed in the subject area you would teach. You would also need certification saying you know how to teach. Though teaching doesn't pay well, you would need to go to college if you wanted to do it. There are many professions which one would be unable to effectively pursue without attending college. Thus many people may want to go to college, not only for the money, but also if they wanted specifically to pursue one such profession.
Why society wants people to attend colleges comes down to a principle I learned in Economics: trade makes people better off. When people trade, they don’t have to do everything to provide for themselves. They can work exclusively on one thing and subsequently get better at that thing. This is known as specialization. Through specialization one person will come to know a lot about one thing, and will, therefore, be able to provide better service to everyone else. When everybody specializes, everybody knows a lot about something different than everybody else, and everybody gets better services in everything. College is what makes people specialized in this day and age. When people go to college, they learn a lot about a single area of study. Society wants people to go to college because specialization makes society better, and college creates specialization.
Thus, with my three questions answered, I can conclude that college is important because it allows individuals to effectively learn more, pursue a greater selection of jobs, earn more money, and specialize, making society better as a whole. College is important not just for an individual, but for society in general. I don’t know that many people realize that.