Earning a college degree may appear to be a daunting proposition if you’re a young person about to graduate from high school or a mature person stuck in an entry-level job with no real hope of rising in your company. The truth is that enrolling in college may be just the break you need to change your life beyond recognition.
It’s easier to just forget about the whole idea of radical self-improvement and settle for tedious, unrewarding work, dismissing college as too expensive or too time-consuming–but it’s only when you move past your comfort zone that your life changes for the better.
When you think about it a little more carefully, you can always get a grant or scholarship to pay your way through college; and, if you’re already part of the working world, you can always get an online degree from an accredited college.
Going to college confers an abundance of gains, including intellectual, financial, and career benefits.
Intellectual Benefits
College will provide you with an unparalleled opportunity to find and follow your passion. You’ll learn more, think deeper, and get certified as a brainiac.
If you love to learn new things, then you can explore your favorite subjects in depth in college. While you may already be an autodidact, reading esoteric literature on your favorite topics, penning expository blog posts on Medium, and sharing your enlightened views in heated private Facebook discussion groups, you’re only skimming the surface of your intellectual potential.
Here’s the thing: It’s not your fault that you can’t immerse yourself in deep learning. You simply don’t have all the resources necessary to master a subject on your own. But all this would change if you went to college. You would have abundant resources within reach, including the time, money, and mentorship necessary to take you to the next level of profound knowledge.
If, for example, you’re a science geek, or an amateur biologist, college would give you the opportunity to get a degree in microbiology. You’d spend your time in a happy daze, lost in a whirl of abstractions, preoccupied with mastering the intricacies of genomic analysis, cell line development, gene editing, and cell-based assays.
Your life will flourish. You’ll transform into the best version of yourself, a sagacious person, a Promethean figure in your circle of friends. Instead of reading random library books, you’ll ponder over scholarly works in your field; instead of blogging on Medium, you’ll write research article reports for prestigious peer-reviewed academic journals; and instead of opining on Facebook with uniformed people who can’t follow your logical sequence, you’ll be enjoying serious discussions with brilliant people at international conventions and academic conferences.
Financial Benefits
Going to college will help you earn more money. A lot more money. According to The Economic Value of College Majors, an illuminating study published by Georgetown University Center on Education illustrated the difference in lifetime wages between college graduates and high school graduates is about $1 million.
This makes perfect sense. Generally, the higher your level of knowledge and skills, the greater your potential contribution to society. Corporations are more likely to promote someone with a degree than someone without one, especially in a forward-looking organization where visionary thinking, written and oral communication skills, analytical ability, and leadership aptitude contribute to the bottom line.
Career Benefits
Top career options are available to someone with a degree. Besides earning more, people crave a feeling of job satisfaction. They also want a sense of security, a feeling that they will always be able to pay their living expenses and take care of their family.
When companies are hiring or promoting, they would rather hire someone with a degree than someone without one, and when companies are downsizing, the first people to go are those who only finished high school.
On the whole, you will gain far more from going to college than trying to work your way up in a corporation. As technology advances, the need for highly educated people will increase, not decrease. Automation will replace tedious, labor-intensive jobs, but the demand for knowledge workers will rise.