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Is Higher Education Worth Spending On?

I want to be an Engineer; I want to be a Politician; I want to be an Officer when I grow up, well these are some dreams from our childhood when we were asked about our profession when we grow up. But not more than 30% of people become what they dream of; they don’t or can’t pursue their dream career. Some people don’t study or track their profession while others study what they have dreamed of but aren’t able to get employed in a particular line, which is more painful. People study and attain degrees in order to get jobs and get highly paid so that they secure a better future than people without degrees. (MEAD)The parents invest in their children in the form of degrees with a thought that they would return it back in shape of the support and better livelihood. But what if I tell you that today most of the college/university degree holders aren’t employed. The huge investment in college studies is not proving to be worth today. Graduated students don’t get jobs after their education, or the jobs they get don’t suit their capabilities and qualifications.

Children are always told to study and achieve a degree and they’ll get a considerable job, youngsters study and invest their time, health and money with a dream in their eyes. They plan to get prodigious jobs and earn good money. But are college degrees fulfilling the expectations and dreams of these students and their guardians? Are college graduates earning good? Are the students even getting in the profession what they are studying for? No, the Degrees aren’t proving to be worthwhile nowadays. People qualifying from universities are sitting idle without jobs or employed in positions for which they never planned. Many people are working as plumbers, carpenters or glazers who have completed their master’s degrees from reputed university or colleges. (Smialek)And many of them aren’t employed at all. The degrees today aren’t getting people the required jobs and the investment on degrees isn’t proving to be profitable. An engineer who has studied for 16 years to become what he dreamt of is working as a postman today and does not have a standard of living an engineer should have. The latest statistics tell that in the US and most of Europe, people aren’t investing in higher education as it does not pay back. According to economists the amount of money people spend on degrees is adequate to build a house and have a good living. According to economists from the US, the unemployment rate amongst college graduates in their early 20s has increased to a substantial percentage in the last years and people who have been employed have jobs which do not need their degrees, which means, they would have got those jobs without these high investment degrees.

According to another research, almost 65,000 university students remain unemployed for a long time after their graduation and the jobs they get aren’t up to their credentials and have low salaries. Today emphasis is paid on engineering, science and technology degrees and the others are just taken for granted. The people who want to study liberal arts or other degrees of their choice aren’t given much of a value. The people with these degrees have also invested a huge amount of money in their higher education but do not get what they dream of. Another fact is that now there is an abundance of engineering and science and technology degrees which has caused saturation in the market and lowered the demand for engineers and the most prominent degrees in the market, hence reducing the supply of these jobs in the industry. College graduates from highly reputed institutes are compromising with lower jobs in order to make a living and negotiate for salaries even though they have been working hard to attain those degrees. (Leef)The shortage of jobs has caused doctors, engineers and people with degrees to work along with the non-degree holder.

Today the people who do not have higher education are employed more easily than the ones with degrees. It is a world of skills and techniques and the people who work on learning skills are successful than the people who are educated. According to research more and more American, college graduates are looking for jobs of their choices but don’t succeed in finding them. Because of recession, many college graduates are sitting at their homes earning nothing and college isn’t proving to be as beneficial now as it previously was. (Jaison R. Abel)Mal-Educated people tend to be employed in better places and have a higher percentage of employment in contrast to the people who have degrees. Recent research by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York the recent college graduates aren’t finding good jobs or even no jobs at all. A data from the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics almost 44% of grads were working in jobs that didn’t require a college degree. (Teichler)

As a matter of fact, from 2013, people in ages 22-27 who are without degrees are working and earning better than the people with degrees in these ages. Many pieces of research show that the topmost highly paid jobs today are achievable without any degree or high school qualification. Technicians, artists, reactor operators, air traffic controllers(GIANG) and many other professionals are the most highly paid people and do not hold any college degree. Similarly, if you search the most successful and the richest people on the internet you will find out that a majority of Millennials don’t have a college degree or a percentage of them have never been to college.(Parramore)According to Pew Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Malik Riaz don’t have a college degree but are classified in the people with the highest standard of living. A college degree has traditionally been regarded as a low-wage job ticket. In most cases, obtaining a college degree is equal still earn a paycheck anymore. However, some college graduates are forced to accept low-wage jobs because of unemployment, lack of well-paid jobs and an increase in the number of graduates. According to Lisa Khan of the Yale School of Management, graduates who graduate during a recession may suffer from the negative financial impact for 15 years. It found that even 18 years after graduation, those who graduated during periods of unemployment are not always doing as much as those who had not.

Unemployment amongst college grads can result in many adverse social and psychological factors. (GURNEY)It can cause an increase in the crime rates among young college graduates, an increase in low self-esteem among youngsters which may result in suicides or inferiority complexes.(Eisenberg and Lazarsfeld)Unemployment may cause depression and lead to suicides in young people. A lack of jobs after the degree is proving to be a stimulus in students to quit their degrees or stop going to colleges which will bring literacy rate down to a dangerous level.

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