GUILFORD — As I prepare to head back to school this fall, there is only one thing that I am dreading. I am not worried about the oncoming load of homework, or the notorious red pen that deals students their assessment number.
In fact, these things will feel calming in comparison to the process of figuring out what to do after high school.
Heading into senior year brings a lot of questions for everyone. Parents want their children to succeed and be happy, while the teen just wants some freedom and to form a solid beginning to their new life of independent living.
* * *
College is usually the default destination for a student planning their next four years. More people than ever are going to college, and the job market is getting flooded with diploma-wielding graduates.
We have all seen the statistics showing how much more money college graduates make compared to their counterparts who didn't receive a higher-education diploma. Between 1998-2000, the U.S. Census Bureau showed that workers with a bachelor's degree made on average about double what high school graduates made in their lifetime, while professional graduates made about four times as much money.
For some of us, we have seen everyone else around us go off to a school for four or five years. Our lust to land that prestigious job and our natural instinct to fit in make the decision to choose college natural, but are we making our choices based on what we really want?
Is the chase for money really going to consume your decisions from the moment you graduate high school to the day you finally retire? Even the economic stability of a college diploma is slipping away due to a poor financial situation and an economy that is being supported by bubbles of credit that are bound to pop before we have any true economic recovery.
Also, with more and more people going to college, simple economics tells us that with more people qualified for high-paying jobs, the salaries of those jobs will go down. Recent graduates across the country are having a harder and harder time getting jobs in their respective fields of study while trying to maintain their load of student loans. Paying off the average graduating debt of about $21,000 (according to CNN) is no easy task on a small salary.
* * *
While some will go to school as an investment for a future higher salary, a small minority will go to college to stimulate curiosity and fill their brains with interesting thoughts.
The majority of students set out on the four-year journey of education with the goal of learning just enough to pass with their desired grade and receive a diploma.
There is so much more to learn than what those hundred-dollar textbooks say, but our student population seems to lack the curiosity to dig deeper for the sake of learning. Albert Einstein took a strong stance on this issue when he said, “It is almost a miracle that modern teaching methods have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for what this delicate little plant needs more than anything, besides stimulation, is freedom.”
The average professor does not help the situation either. Many professors teach as few hours a week as possible, leaving all personal instruction to graduate students who have their own work to be worried about.
Professors will also bend and twist the truth to the advantage of the corporation that employs them. It has become a trend for a professor to pad his or her incomes with a consulting job on the side, taken in the guise of staying connected to the business world for the benefit of their students.
Has our education system suppressed the intellectual curiosity and integrity of learning? I can only hope to find the answer to be in favor of true learning as I set out next year.
I certainly will not be expecting a lucrative salary as I enter my post-college years, so I hope I can have a head full of worthwhile ideas to ponder.