Brunswick High School’s Dual Enrollment English 101 course was given an assignment to write a persuasive essay about a topic of their choosing. The Garnet & Gold Gazette staff chose their top 10 editorials to publish on our site. Staff used elements of news such as proximity, reader impact, human interest, and prominence within our community to publish relevant and enticing information on our site. 

The essays chosen did an amazing job informing readers on the content and creating persuasive arguments on the chosen topics.

“Is college really necessary to be successful?”

Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerburg, and my Dad all have one thing in common. They all dropped out of college. A college degree is not necessary for a successful future, nor is it guaranteed. Due to the thousands of dollars of debt you accumulate, no guaranteed high paying job after graduation, and other high paying jobs available that require no college degree, all make college not worth it. 

The average cost of attending a college is $104,108 for all four years. No normal person has that kind of money just lying around, especially low-income families. So, students end up taking out loans, and accumulating mountains of debt. This can greatly impact their financial goals: buying a house, saving for retirement, investing, or building their emergency fund could all be pushed back years.  Not only are students going to be behind in their financial journeys, but they will be set up for failure. Not that it’s a sure thing that they will fail, but that these loans now make it one-hundred times harder to catch back up. Time is one of the most precious things, and to waste it on paying off student loans, instead of saving up for your first home, is terrible. 

There are many jobs in the workforce that have high salaries and do not require a degree. For instance, my father’s job: owning his own construction company. Immigrating from El Salvador at a young age, and having a single mother, college. College was seen as too costly, so my father found other ways to be successful. He found job opportunities at masonry, landscaping, and pool hardscape companies. Through these jobs, he gained knowledge that would later lead him to creating his own company. Today he has close to fifty employees and new tasks being brought to his desk each day.  Instead of attaining this with college credits and massive debt he turned to hard work and perseverance to make close to what some doctors make. 

Graduating from a four year college still doesn’t ensure you will end up with a high paying job. A recent graduate from Dillard University, Darius Wilson stated, “I was surprised by the lack of responses from employers even when I met their qualifications and experience. It’s extremely frustrating to wait for employers to get back to you, if they ever do” (McGonagill). Even with degrees, graduates are finding it difficult to find jobs, the time and money spent on a college degree is not securing people jobs anymore. In those four years people could be on many other career paths that cost less and take less time; but also have high salaries.

However, some college degrees really can be worth it. When it comes to becoming doctors, attorneys or lawyers a degree is required. The salaries for these careers can range from 90k-500k depending on which path they take. These jobs are high paying salaries, but a degree is needed, and the schooling can take quite long. But positions for these jobs are always open because of how few people complete the schooling. 

In today’s day in age college is not the end all be all to having a successful life/career. There are many other paths one can take to be successful, and college doesn’t have to be one of them. The tuition for these universities keeps increasing with each passing year, causing students to rack up an ungodly amount of debt. Save your time, money, and effort and look into other career options that do not require a college degree. 

Works Cited:

McGonagill, Ryan. “College Graduates Struggling to Get Hired.” Business.Com, www.business.com/hiring/new-

          graduates-job-search-experiment/. Accessed 1 Oct. 2023.