Why College Matters
It's about more than just getting a job
I was never not going to college. My parents met in college and then graduated from different schools. My maternal grandmother quit attending Michigan State to get married and then returned to college after her four children were all grown. She was not allowing her only daughter to not graduate from college, and so my mom earned a social work degree from Michigan State that never got full use. My mom had four daughters, and college was always a part of the discussion regarding our futures. Even if we wanted to be SAHMs like her, we were going to do so with a degree in hand.
I was a very good student with middling ambitions. Once my freshman English teacher inspired me in his classroom, I knew I wanted to be a high school English teacher. My plan was to graduate with a teaching degree and teach for a few years before I became a SAHM, like my own mother. I would meet my college sweetheart and maybe return to teaching once my kids were old enough to all be in school.
But no matter how my adult life unfolded, I would go to college.
And I still look back on those four and a half years as some of the most fun and formative years of my life. It isn’t just about the degree that has allowed me to teach for nearly 25 years. I’ve always believed college is so much more than just getting a piece of paper that says you are qualified for a professional field.
This summer has once again brought that lesson home for me.
Part of my summer parenting work has been going on college tours.
My children have also grown up in a household where college is an expectation. I got my Master’s when they were toddlers. My husband, who has always been game for another conference or certification, eventually finished his undergrad online after we moved to Texas. Learning is just a part of living. They grew up in a house full of books. We’ve taken them all over the country to every kind of national park and historic site. We listen to audiobooks while on the road and talk about movies and shows that we watch together. My husband and I don’t expect straight As, but we expect them to do their best in school and challenge themselves when possible. Our daughter finishes up an early college program this year; our son is just starting the same program this fall.
And while my daughter’s plans for her future career have changed, college is still an important part of the equation. She’s given up the girlish dreams of being a veterinarian and wants to pursue creative writing and interior design (because she needs something to help pay the bills while she's trying to get that first novel published). She knows she doesn’t need college to become a published writer, but she also understands the importance of studying the craft from professionals who know more about the world than she does.
So, this summer, we visited four colleges within driving distance of Indianapolis. She already knew which one was at the top of her list, but after four visits, it got bumped down to a close second.
I loved these college visits. I fondly remembered my years as a student tour guide, getting paid by the admissions office to take high school students around campus and eat with them to answer their questions. I was impressed by the one (out of four) tour guide who safely walked backward while answering questions and telling stories. I appreciated dorm rooms that looked much like the room I shared with my roommate nearly 30 years ago.
On these visits I did a lot of reminiscing, telling my daughter about my own college years. I thought about classes with professors who opened up my world. I recalled Thursday nights in the common room watching Friends and ER with my dorm mates. I remembered long conversations in the dining hall and late-night trips to Perkins when my friends and I weren’t ready to call it a night. I asked my daughter if she had thought about studying abroad and told her it was the best experience of my college career. I admitted that one of the best parts of our off-campus apartment senior year was the walking distance to the local bar, frequented by mostly seniors who had moved on from house parties.
I loved college. I loved nearly everything about my college years, despite the few all-nighters, the crazy roommate junior year, the weekends spent locked in my room writing whole papers, and being 700 miles away from my boyfriend. College is not just where I learned what I needed to know to enter an ever-evolving career; it was the place that formed me into the adult that I am today.
College is not a scam. College is not for everyone, and all young people need to be fully aware of their options, and their choices should be honored.1
But college is not a scam, and anyone who claims that college is a scam is either maliciously or naively overlooking the importance of a university education in shaping a strong democracy.
There is a reason why the South is full of HBCUs. African Americans, who were blocked from getting college educations at most universities, needed a place where they could continue to learn and grow and pursue professions that had been denied them for the first hundred years of the United States.
There is a reason why Congress passed the GI Bill after World War II. The country had an entire generation of young men returning from war, and the United States chose to thank them for their service by giving them opportunities their parents never had.
There is a reason why so many families still want their children to attend college, even with the skyrocketing costs and the risk of student loan debt. Those families know that college offers young people opportunities that cannot be overlooked.
And going on college visits this summer reminded me just how much a full university education matters.
College is where I learned how to be an adult with the necessary distance from home and the safety net of a university behind me. I was fully responsible for my laundry and working with my roommate to keep our space clean. My parents weren’t sending me extra money from across the country, so I had to keep my bank account full enough to have fun by working enough hours on campus. No one was going to wake me up to make sure I didn’t miss an exam or an important function. If I wanted to skip class, no one was tracking me down to make sure I didn’t skip again.2 When I was sick, I had to drag myself to the store to get the appropriate medicine and decide if I was well enough to do everything I needed to do. I could go pretty much anywhere I wanted without permission, as long as I had transportation to get there, and I would have to deal with the consequences if there were any. I was responsible for meeting with my adviser to ensure I was taking all of the right classes to graduate. I had to go to the financial aid office to ensure I had filled out all of the right paperwork. Once I had a car sophomore year, I had to drive myself home to Michigan or down to Kansas to visit my grandparents during longer weekend breaks. And if everything went sideways? There were real adults around to help me navigate my way out of whatever situation I found myself in.
College is also where I learned the beauty of community. My friends and I went to class together, ate together, stayed up late in our dorm rooms and common areas, talking about nothing and everything. Twenty-five years later, I still can pick up and have conversations with college friends I haven’t seen in years, because college built different kinds of relationships.3
College helped me figure out some of the hard stuff without pressures from home. My professors and adviser treated me like an adult with valuable opinions and ideas. They let me try on different notions, work through them, and encouraged me to think for myself. Going to a liberal arts college forced me to take classes in math and science that I would never use in my professional life, but have made me a more informed and thoughtful citizen. I had the opportunity to study abroad for a semester and learned even more about myself and the world while having a safe place to live and study.
College is more than just a place to get job training. The best colleges and universities challenge young people to think differently, learn new ideas, and effectively defend the positions they hold dear. They expand knowledge and inspire new, world-changing discoveries. They give teenagers a safe place to become adults. They create leaders.
And it should be affordable and accessible for everyone.
Instead of vilifying college professors for “indoctrinating” young people, we should be thankful for relatively safe spaces where young adults can learn and be challenged to think differently about the world they live in. Instead of treating every college major like preparation for the career our children will have for life, we should help them see the degree as a stepping stone that will give them the skills they need to enter professions in an ever-changing world.4 Instead of telling people with liberal arts degrees that their hard work and learning are worthless, we should be creating opportunities for them to make a living using what they learned to make our nation better.
No, a college degree is not a scam. The scam was allowing people to convince us that an educated populace wasn't essential. The scam was accepting that the high cost of an education was just the price of doing business. The scam was pretending that we could divide our population into trade school and college-educated and that our democracy would be just fine.
College matters, and we need more people willing to say that out loud.
Support my writing
Read more about our family’s camping and travel adventures by ordering your own copy of The Life I Never Knew I Wanted.
While most of my work here is free for all subscribers, it is still a labor of love that I fit into the few hours I have when I am not teaching or being an attentive wife and mom. If you want to support my writing but you do not want to commit to being a paid subscriber, please consider a one-time donation.
You can also support me by ordering my book or books from my favorite book lists at my Bookshop.org affiliate page.
Check out my RedBubble store for related merchandise.
If you want to be a regular supporter, you can upgrade your subscription from free to paid and get occasional content only for paid subscribers.
And thank you for supporting my journey 💗
I’ve taught many students who were destined for the military or the trades, and it was the right move for them. We need to see each path as equally important and legitimate.
But because I’m a hopeless eldest daughter, I didn’t skip. My fellow eldest-daughter roommate and I skipped a class together once. It was an 8 AM linguistics class, and we weren’t feeling it. And skipping was a very big deal for both of us.
A lot of ink has been spilled on the loneliness epidemic. Making sure that college campuses are places that still foster the kind of community is one way to help young people once again find community that will follow them into adulthood. In fact, I could make a case that this should also be a part of reforming trade schools. Why can’t trade schools maintain the shorter track while also being community learning spaces?
Because realistically, how many people are actually using the degree they got in college for the field written on that piece of paper? I mean, I still am, but I know that I’m increasingly the exception, not the rule.
As someone who now works in higher education and gets to see the transformation of our students from freshman to seniors, I really appreciate this post.