Should You Go to College?

About two-thirds of American high school graduates go on to start college. Unfortunately, only about 60% of them end up earning a degree within the following six years. Financial constraints are a big part of the reason for incompletion: College in the United States has grown grossly expensive. College tuition costs have doubled over the past 30 years at American private colleges, and they have increased by more than 300% at state schools. The worst news is that even if you don’t earn a degree, you are still on the hook for any money you borrowed for college.

Another reason many people fail to complete college is poor fit. I don’t mean that they went to a college they didn’t like, dropped out, and then never went anywhere else. Most first year college students are actually highly satisfied with the college they chose to attend. I mean than many students go to college when they probably shouldn’t have. The 40% of high school graduates who start but don’t finish college (but who end up with huge student loan debts anyway), probably should have asked themselves the following questions, back when they were still high school seniors:

1. Why do I want to go to college?

What if you’re headed to college just because your friends are headed to college, and they’re headed to college just because you and their other friends are? What if no one actually knows why they’re doing this big thing? What if you are just choosing what seems to be, at this point in your life, the path of least resistance? Are you just on autopilot? Are you swimming upstream with the rest of the fish, heading in a certain direction just because everyone else is headed that way? Is that a good enough reason to go to college? Maybe you’ll discover reasons to stay in college once you get there? But what if you don’t?

Are you headed to college just to please your parents, or because everyone just kinda expects that this is what you’ll do next? It’s interesting that one of the traditional effects of going away to college, is that you will start caring less and less about what your parents think about things. It would be ironic to do something in order to please them and then find that that thing causes you to resent having tried to please them. How involved are your parents in your college plans? Are they suggesting schools to you? Do they seem to care more about the process than you do? That’s a really bad sign. They’re not going to college, you are (and you better not bring them with you). This should mean more to you than it does to them.

Are you thinking about college in order to prepare for a specific career that you have been interested in for a while and which you have investigated pretty well already? You’ve always wanted to be a physician like your grandmother? You volunteered at a hospital last summer? You got your EMT certificate during your senior spring? Go for it! Some professions, like medicine, law, and engineering, require college degrees as a prerequisite for graduate training. But many do not. Are you sure you want to be a physician and not an EMT? A lawyer and not a police officer? An engineer and not a contractor or construction supervisor?

2. Do I really like to read, or am I really good at math?

I hope you can answer affirmatively to one or both parts of this question. Be perfectly honest with yourself. What’s the last book you’ve read that wasn’t assigned for a class? If you read for pleasure, do you tend to read escapist entertainments or young adult (YA) books? Have you read six or more challenging books in the past 12 months? There’s a lot of reading in college, no matter what major you choose. Do you really want to spend four years doing something you are not very good at and which you don’t enjoy?

The other side of the question, about being good at math, is critical for the potential engineers and scientists. To be good at something is to enjoy it, so there is a big difference between being able to do math and actually liking to do math. You’re good at math if in the past couple of years you have always taken the hardest math courses available to you, and if you have always outperformed at least 60% of your classmates. Think about the 20 or so people in your most recent math class. Can you name the 12 students who you were definitely better than at math?

I hate to sound old fashioned, and I am quite aware that colleges have an awful lot of extracurricular and social activities, but academics is still at the heart of every college. People don’t fail out of college because they failed to make enough friends or participate in enough clubs. But every semester, students fail out because they could not make the grade. For most of these students, I suspect that their failures are rooted in a lack of interest in academic activities. You can be an introvert and succeed in college. You can shun all extracurriculars and succeed in college. You cannot loathe academics and succeed in college.

3. What would I do with the next few years if there were no such thing as college?

You’ve gotten into college! Congratulations! Now, pretend for a minute that the college you planned to attend, and all other colleges, suddenly disappeared due to some kind of academic zombie apocalypse. What does the upcoming year look like now? What are you going to do instead? Be as specific and as realistic as you can. Where will you live? With whom will you associate? What kind of work will you be doing? (By the way, stop thinking about “work versus school”; done properly, school is work. If you were devote 40 hours a week to your studies at college, you would be practically unstoppable.) There is a chance that the alternative plan that you have devised compares favorably to going to college, or even looks better to you.

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4. Am I mature enough for college?

If your top reasons for going to college involve joining a fraternity or sorority, attending athletic events, or abusing drugs and alcohol, then you should probably take a deep breath and reconsider. Alcohol abuse is a leading reason why people flame out of college and end up with lots of debt and no degree. Going to college actually increases people’s risk of developing alcohol-related disorders. There is a reason why people who start college later in life are far more likely to finish that those who start at age 18 or 19. If you can’t already self-regulate your own behavior, in college there won’t be anyone else around to do it for you.

Choosing whether to go to college is a big decision. Unfortunately, our education system seems to have as its default that as many students as possible should go on the college, regardless of whether that is in their best interests. Spending some time pondering these questions, writing out responses to them, and discussing your answers to trusted others might help you from becoming one of the unhappy and debt-burdened 40% of college non-completers.