The Business of College by Trelsie

The Business of College by Trelsie - April 2020 Scholarship Essay

One out of every 20 college graduates are unemployed and in debt. The idea was to go to a university or college, get a degree, fine a job, work for 60 plus years, and retire. Unfortunately, many college students are having a hard time even getting past the "find a job" point. We go off to college with high hopes, major in what they love, instead of what will pay the bills. In fact, we pay an arm and a leg for graduation and a frame for a piece of paper we may never look at again. Then the inevitable happens, we are job hunting endlessly, all while tweaking our cover letters and resumes, just for the HR of certain companies not to even send out a "Thank You" email. I say all of this to say that, yes, attending college is important; for me at least. See, I was one of many students who desired to work in the medical field and a degree was necessary to do so. But if one is not majoring in what we consider promising fields like Nursing, Public Health, STEM, Criminal Justice etc. the degree could be considered a waste, especially if you cannot afford graduate school. The American system tries to convince us that we need a degree to succeed. We shell out all of this money in student loans.We watch our friends who did not obtain a degree live their best lives, all while the typical college student struggles to pay back their loan. In the midst of it all, college graduates have to battle with the idea that they are too good to work in fast-food, but even with their degree, they are not good enough for the corporate world who convinced them to get this degree in the first place. The answer is not just black and white, it requires a lot of dissection. However, whether college is necessary or not really depends on what you are going for. Make the debt worth it, most people will have to live the rest of their lives with [debt] it, literally.