Many people may be questioning if it is even worth it to go to college. Why not just keep your summer construction job? Well, going to college is a much better idea. College may be expensive, but the benefits of going are well worth it. Without going to college you would not get the opportunity to have better jobs, become a well rounded individual, or meet new and diverse people.
It is a fact that people with college educations have better job opportunities and on average make more money than those without a college degree. In a report from the U.S. Census Bureau in the Fall 2002 Occupational Outlook Quarterly it states that those who graduated college with a bachelors degree will make an average of 2.1 million dollars in his or her career compared to the 1.2 million that those who only had a high school diploma will make (Earnings estimates are for full-time, year-round workers and are based on 1997-99 work experience. Life earnings estimates are created by using the working population's 1-year annual earnings and summing their age-specific average earnings for people aged twenty-five to sixty-four. The resulting totals represent what individuals with the same educational level could expect to earn, on average, in today's dollars during a hypothetical forty year working life). If making money is important, then going to college is a good idea.
According to the same Occupational Outlook Quarterly, workers age twenty-four to thirty-four years old holding college degrees rose from 26% to 33% between 1992 and 2000. This shows that more people have college degrees than ever before. A degree certainly does not hurt while applying for jobs. When interviewing for jobs, if one person has a degree and the others do not, the person with the degree has one more qualification to his or her advantage. .
There are also effects of going to college that do not necessarily deal with getting a good job in the future.