Argumentative Essay On College Dropouts

2470 Words5 Pages

Imagine yourself as a college dropout. What are your first emotions and reactions that pop into your head? For most of you, your brain will automatically associate dropping out of college with failure. Maybe some of you think of successful college dropouts like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs. However, that connection is stopped by the fact that when discussing famous college dropouts, they are made into the special cases that are so lucky you’d never end up like them. Starting in middle school, students are conditioned to believe college is the best option for you to choose. You figure out what you want your career to be so you know what to study. You figure out what to study so you know what kind of grades you should be getting …show more content…

This is due to the government backing out on millions of dollars in funding since 1967 when President Ronald Reagan boasted society shouldn’t pay for people exploring their “intellectual curiosity” (Selingo). Tuition has now more than doubled since the last generation leading to more loans being taken out by students. Chad took out loans to go to college and like two-thirds of college graduates, Chad is still paying them off years later. College is no different from any other business. They market their brand and their product to you so you pick them over another college. Yes, all those emails that colleges mass produce and send starting your junior year. So when saying college is a business, there is one known thing that drives all businesses in a market, and that is profit. 18 year olds fresh out of an environment where they have to ask to use the bathroom, graduate and automatically have to know how to do everything involving taxes, FAFSA, scholarships, loans, grants, billing, the list goes on. As Chad cautions in our interview, “whenever you sign off on a promissory at the age of 18 years old for student loans you have no idea what you’re signing” (Chad). Furthermore, no matter how bad loans are to the students, it is great profit for the college. Not …show more content…

When looking at the value of an associate 's degree, what do you see? The associate’s degree is the lowest degree you can earn in college. It only takes two years and is usually just used to show that you went to college, not to show you are going into a certain field. Decades before, if you had an associate’s degree, you were an elite. The normal for what jobs expected before was just a high school diploma. Now jobs have raised their expectations so high that McDonald 's, a fast-food chain that everyone saw as the place you get a job at when you’re just that desperate, doesn’t even accept workers without at least an associate’s degree. If a fast-food place is asking for at least a two-year college degree, higher paying jobs are now asking for at least a bachelor’s degree. This change in what is expected has taken a huge toll on everyone looking for employment. When college kids graduate then need a job right away to start paying off those loans. That forces individuals to be “unemployed and many who were employed worked jobs unrelated to their college studies”(London 2). This was found by the One Associated Press analysis of 2011 graduates, showing because they had this false belief set in by the colleges that their degree would get them a higher paying job related to their career, 54% of graduates remain unemployed and just end up being waitresses or busboys. This expectation businesses and society

Open Document