Is college worth it? A question that has been asked countless times as students and their families consider going. A question asked by college students every morning when they get out of bed. And a question asked by people who have long since graduated and are now looking back on their lives trying to judge how they turned out. All of these people are right to ask this question. And in short the answer is, college is worth it. All in all a person is bigger and better for college gaining social competence, learn intelligence, and create economic growth. This is compounded by the boon that a college educated populous provides to a society. And though college is not a prerequisite to a good life it certainly is the best rout there. In conclusion you should go to college. When going to College the first thing that you get is potentially the most valuable. The Social effects of college greatly enhance your life and your ability to live with others. From developing your social skills and learning to work in teams to learning of and about life before taking the dive proper to becoming a person worthy of their place in the world. To be clear this is not to say that this trait is exclusive to college graduates latter there will be a section of the paper dedicated to talking about how many of the traits mentioned are not exclusive so let the stand as your warning that all future implications that a trait is exclusive will be glossed over for simplicity's sake

Above the term 'social competence' is used to describe the difference between an individual who has gone through college and one who has not. Learning to coexist with others is a key factor in this. On your first day you walk into your dorm and the first thing you do is talk with your roommate deciding how the two of you are going to live this semester, next you walk into your first class and find yourself forming a study group to help pass. These are but a few examples of how students grow their social competence. Now most people do not learn this in high school, yes the do talk and work with others but the famose click minimizes the social learning involved. Hence coexistence is one of the most basic and fundamental things learned when going to college. These skills then aid in every life task involving other people, and there is no better place to learn them than college (Git, Aliah).

Though the argument over safe spaces in colleges has threatened to derail this balance, college is a unique place where you are safe from persecution and ruin as a result of your ideas but also exposed to everyone else's ideas. Be it learning to live on your own , to manage your own time or how to budget out what resources you have; you don't get out of college without learning life lessons. On the point of living on one's own (and yes I recognize that most students live with roommates but so do most people in the wider world live with a spouse or roommate or someone else in some fashion) college opens the opportunity to learn how to manage your time without the imminent consequences of ending up on the street. At the same time college provides a system of consequences and rewards in the form of grades and GPA rewording students who do wiel while at the same time punishing students who perform poorly.

Looking at a high school graduate and college graduate there is a wide gap in the way that they think and act (Clary, Jason). College grows character (Clary, Jason) and this is essential moving into the wider world. Knowing who and what you are are the cornerstones of life when asking oneself  'how should I act and behave' a college student can look to a body of knowledge, founded both in experience and academic research, on how behaviour affects society and the world around them. This is in contrast to a highschool student who is likely to simply act the way that they have always acted therefore nullifying the possibility for self improvement.  Secondly as colleges tend to deal more with present and real issues rather that high schools with are content to refine study to things that have already transpired and you end up at the conclusion that college like a petri dish  allows for the infectus growth of character without the pathogenic effects of the open world, bringing about people who are strongly enough themselves upon entering -the wider world to avoid being crushed by it.

So is college worth it, the exuberant cost of entry is daunting but it is certain that you walk out a better person as a result of it. Without these social skills anyone would be handicapped in life. A person who can get along with other with whom they  disagree is a person who will find friends in a world where no one agrees, a person who knows how to lead their own life effectively will be more productive than the one who can not, and who can maintain the decorum of proper behavior while at the same time successful doing just as much as the person who can't will be looked to first by default. If you want evidence of this look at all the people who look to higher college graduates regardless of what their degree says(Git, Aliah). It is worth it to go and walk out with not but the experiences gained by interacting in and about the campus.

The first classes you take when you get to campus are often the most general ones from english to a fine art or a history class. While this knowledge may not improve your job performance there is nothing like winning that trivia game or understanding events in the world around you in a deeper and more inclusive way. It is these classes that provide a wide base of general knowledge necessary to go out and build a life upon. Let's be honest when it comes to our lives how much time do we actually spend at our jobs a sixth or eighth of our lives compared to the third that we spend sleeping or largest yet proportion everything else, and this is where the general knowledge gained in general ed is useful. This knowledge serves to provide context to the wider world opening it to interpretation beyond what is normally considered. Therefore a greater and more inclusive and as more inclusive tends to be more fun experience of life. 

This may sound stupid but so did the people who first said the world is not flat, in college the most important thing you learn is how to learn. Now it doesn't matter how smart you are or how quickly you can pick up new topics you inevitably can only learn a finite amount of things in college. However by learning to learn it is possible to extend one's education indefinitely into the latter periods of one's life. In high school it is the teacher's obligation to ensure that the student learns in college this dynamic is reversed and it is the student who is in turn required to take charge of his learning. This on the surface seems a small difference however it amounts to two different and important outcomes A) college students care and B) college students find the fun in learning something the prior to this point was force feed them. Thus by combining the ability to and the desire to learn a college student is going to be better at taking up a new profession hobby or just enjoying the interesting and complex world around them.

People go to college to learn something specific, a trade or knowledge set for a specific job somewhere out in the world or even in some cases and academic knowledge set that is useful solely within the environment of the university itself  such that the student can act freely as a self deterministic agent in the world, the real world. This pursuit of knowledge is often the primary use of time and energy for a student. Such knowledge is not only the means by which moste justify college but also the standard system by which college grows its students into productive individuals capable of doing something useful in the world and in the process feeding themselves.

College is about learning, ask any person on the street and this is the first thing that they will tell you. People pay exorbitant bills and work hard to learn not because college is about having fun and surging of four to five years between school and work but rather a mechanism for self improvement. College is most worth its cost in its target area of learning yes a school can boast an impressive resume of other reasons why student should attend but the main reason why this is even a practice is because this learning is so universal that it is generally assumed. If you have to ask you self 'is college worth the cost of admission' the answer should simply be in the previous paragraph does the knowledge associated with the degree you plan to pursue worth the cost. Learning to become a lifelong learner and thus becoming a more rounded and productive person is a bonus. General knowledge about the world and life in it is a bonus. Certainly all the other arguments in this paper are a bonus. The true value of college is in what you learn there and how it affects the person you are.

In the first argument it is said that the first and arguably most important thing that you learn in college is how to coexist with others. Second how you learn life lessons, third growth of character, fourth general knowledge, learning to learn, and a trade.  What do all these things have in common they tend to improve the societies that are made up of individuals of this sort. The argument has been made that a society made up entirely of college grads would lack diversity, in contrast look at any college campus and you will find it to be far more diverse than other public settings. It is by virtue of the fact that college are diverse and full of an endless list of ways to improve one's self that the are so pervasive in modern societies and so under represented in backward and less developed societies. This is because society is better for being made up of better people. 

Social is derived from the word society and it is therefore no surprise that when it comes to improving society the social knowledge and skills gained in college are invaluable to any populus. A group of people who constantly bicker and argue or worse people who avoid each other will never get anything done but a group of people experience in coexisting with thoughts the disagree with can organize an orderly debate where all are involved and progress is had. People who know how to survive in social situations tend to be able to lend larger portions of their energy to task that grow the society. Finally good people both encourage other people to be good and are inherently more likely to contribute disproportionate amounts of their energy to the society as a whole.

There is nothing more deadly to society than intellectual stagnation. It is a slow poison that will eat away at the core of a society till like the hollow rotten tree it is reclaimed by the earth. This is due largely to the way that human psychology biases new information if everything remains the same no matter how good conditions are the brain will tend to think of the event as normal or neutral thus allowing for minor inconveniences or problems that will naturally arise in the real world to poison people's minds with negative bias. In a healthy society this negative bias is outweighed by or at least balanced by positive new action driven by new knowledge foster new and better ways of living that at the end of the day result if happer people. But when society has a net negative view of itself it becomes unstable and susceptible to collapse. College is an antidote to this by keeping the next generation apprised of everything that has been learned by the former generation they can focus on building upon that knowledge rather than rediscovering it. Which is ultimately what builds a society from nothing into the giants and titans that roam the earth building ever greater wonders.

Though this paper has largely to up to this point avoided a discussion of economic it is important to note that college graduates produce more, this leads to them making more, which in turn leads to them spending more, which stimulates the economy to grow more, with allows for more college graduates to produce ever more. This cycle aids and enhances society around it by increasing the size and power of the local economy thus positively affecting the buying power of all around regardless of college attendance while simultaneously pushing society forward and perpetuating itself to bring about an exponential increase in the quality of living for all.

Over the course of a lifetime the college student makes more money (Weston, Liz), need more be said. All things considered college makes money for the majority of those who attend]. This translates into more buying power over a lifetime and while on its own this says nothing of financial stability over a lifetime(Clary, Jason). When combined with all college students learn on average about money it is true that the majority of college students will treat the money better and more wisely than those who do not attend(Clary, Jason).

Now the big thing with college and the source of all of the controversy in the first place is loans. If you have to go into debt to attend how is it worth it. Admittedly there are more than a few people who are royally screwed by there loans. But all in all most people pay them off in the first decade or so and after that it is all icing. People make more money(Pew Research Center) but also have more stable employment(Clary, Jason) and enjoy their jobs more. This solves first the problem of being miserable while paying off loans, though it certainly is no fun you are likely enjoying life more than the guy in your graduating class who didn't go to college and is now cleaning bathrooms at mcdonald's. Second you will be able to pay them off stable employment and higher salary mean that you have every opportunity to pay it back so that it is not a world ending problem.

More money is more money is more money, yes that is very repetitive but it is also true no matter what you passion in life sitting on a char of solid one dollar bills or helping impoverished people eat more monie is an endlessly helpful tool. College grad tend to make lost more than those who don't graduate from college and this defines the rest of the world in there tems by default.

So will monie is far from the best reason to go to college it is important to note that it is on the side of going not of staying away. There are reasons not to go (in the next paragraph) but they certainly have nothing to do with the average earnings of someone who goes.

One of the biggest or widespread ideas against college is that there are a slew of people who never whent or flunked out. Now I can read your mind 'these people are the exception not the rule', well that is not exactly true because if they were the exception than there would be an inherent randomness about them but there is not they seem to follow a very common thread whereby they are all excellent at coexisting with those around them as was earlier discussed. They understand how to live and survive in the world around them they often have fantastic character and tend to be immensely intelligent and add to society in countless ways. So then what is the difference between them and college graduates, well the difference is solly that they did not go to college.

College is ultimately only one tool to learn everything stated in the above arguments and is far from the cheapest or most efficient. What college is however is easily reproducible, a trait which in the long run means that those of us who cannot or do not find a unique path to learning all of these essential things are not inherently doomed but rather offered the opportunity to come along and join the party. So while college does cost an exorbitant amount of money massive amounts of our time and energy and a slice of our soul, it returns everything that we need know about being a productive person in the wider world.

So while a college degree is not a hard and fast prerequisite for a successful and happy life it certainly helps in achieving that end. At the end of the day you are a better smarter and more financially sound person for attending college. Bringing out the qualities within that will lead to a more enjoyable life and better outlook on the world. A world that is immeasurably improved by being occupied by the stronger and more capable individuals produced by colleges around the globe. Bringing this back  around to to make your life better and better the lives of all those generations who follow. So why is college is worth it, All in all a person is bigger and better for college gaining social competence, learn intelligence, and create economic growth. This is compounded by the boon that a college educated populous provides to a society. And though college is not a prerequisite to a good life it certainly is the best rout there, thus you should go to college. Having answered the question as best as is possible it is now possible to formally recommend advice as a result, go to college. So have a nice day and enjoy your time in college.

