I Was Supposed to Graduate Last Week
This was supposed to be my graduation year. Had I gone to college straight from high school, I would have most likely walked across a stage last week and received my diploma. But I didn’t go straight to college. I took a gap year, spent a year at Lewis & Clark, joined a start up, transferred to Barnard, and then, after a total of four semesters plus some summer classes, withdrew as a student.
My path has been crooked and it is with great interest that I watch my high school classmates who took a more direct route enter the ‘real’ world. This year the majority of my high school classmates graduated from college. Most of those who are graduating have already walked across elevated stages, applauded by friends and family, and been handed a diploma. Many graduated with honors and some were even speakers. They’ve plastered their social media accounts with pictures of them in their caps and gowns, had graduation parties, and moved out of their dorms. It’s all very exciting, but it’s also bittersweet.
The Class of 2014 has made history as “the most indebted class ever.” The average loan-holding 2014 college graduate will have to pay back $33,000, nearly double the amount students were facing 20 years ago even after adjusting for inflation. On top of this, over 70% of bachelor’s degree recipients hold loans.
While a college diploma is still in many fields considered a prerequisite to get even an entry-level position, it is no longer the guarantee of employment it once was. Students vie not only for jobs, but also for internships with the hopes of a job materializing after months, if not years, of hard work and little to no pay. When graduates do become employed, they must face the fact that while the average student load debt has risen 35% (from 2005-2012), the median salary has dropped 2.2%, and their prospects of paying off their loans in a timely manner are slim to none.
My high school classmates, both loan-holding and otherwise, are walking off of that stage into a fiscal quagmire that seriously brings into question the value of the diploma they spent upwards of $200,000 earning. $1000 on a semesters worth of books makes sense when the payoff, a high-paying job with upward mobility, is a unspoken guarantee. However, when there are no promises, when your school isn’t motivated to find you employment, when companies are doing the opposite of hiring, and when you are taking on debt in the form of student loans, credit cards, etc., the benefits of that gilded piece of paper start to fall away.
College is still, for many, an important institution. It provides us opportunities for growth as both a student and a human, but it’s also a little bit of a holding tank. Taking kids in at 17/18, letting them grow or just keeping them occupied, and then releasing them back out into the world four years later. This role, the role of holding tank, is unfortunately embraced by colleges, most of which and especially those held in the highest regard, rarely take a moment to step back and conduct a critical analysis of whether what they are teaching is actually turning out graduates who are prepared for today’s harsh realities.
Our schools, many hundreds of years old, rely by-and-large on curriculums that are also hundreds of years old. Liberal arts colleges, which make up the majority of Ivy Leagues and top tier universities, purport to prepare students for long and successful careers, but don’t event consider the fact that what was needed to be successful when Abraham Lincoln was in office does not necessarily still hold the same value it once did.
I want to congratulate my friends. I want to believe that if they haven’t found a job yet they will soon. I want to agree with them that the unpaid internship at a community theater in Seattle will launch their directing career, but I can’t. With tens of thousands of dollars in student loans, high living expenses, low salaries, and a sour job market, I can’t lie to my friends and tell them that it was all worth it because I’m not sure if it was.
Chances are that I will eventually go back to school, not because I want a degree, but because I love learning and actually enjoy class. I’ll probably major in anthropology or writing, take a ridiculously long time to earn the right to walk across that stage, and pose for dozens of cheesy photos in my cap and gown all around NYC. College still, for all its problems, holds a lot of worth. Whether as a holding tank or a place of higher learning, it serves a purpose that I can’t wholly rule out.
However, College’s place isn’t permanent and, as student debt continues to rise along with tuitions, it will need to innovate and evolve to fit the changing landscape. It might be hard to take down a 800 year old behemoth, but even Goliath had David.
Reblogged this on Eugiverse and commented:
Girl… I loved this post. I agree wholeheartedly. The college system is an archaic form of education that is selling unrealistic ideals to our youth. I particularly enjoyed your every detailed characterization of what the average college student are graduating with. I will happily confess that I have close to 51k in debt and I have absolutely no idea when and how I’ll be able to pay that off. I can’t say if the amount of money I drained into my college education will ever pay itself off but what I can say is that I wouldn’t have discovered that things I have discovered about myself if I didn’t challenge myself academically. I LOVE the fact that you took a leap year after high school. I cannot preach that enough and I am too familiar with the negative stigma it brings along with it. I didn’t take a leap year but I did drop out for a year to see if college was something I really wanted and needed. I somehow managed to graduate so that’s good.
I totally respect your decision to go back to college when the time is right. I also shared your concern of not graduating with most of your high school friends but you know what? You’re way ahead of the curve. I’ve met so many college graduates working dead end jobs and just pays the bills. If that’s the kind of job graduates settles with then YES, their education was a total waste of time and they’ll probably never pay off their 30k-70K debt. Finding things about yourself, about what you like, what you don’t like is what college is about. You spent so much time investing yourself into a field that you’re already passionate about and I think that’s really cool. It doesn’t matter if you graduate in 4 years or 10 years. The important thing is you found something you want to do and you’re realistic in terms of what the economy and the job market is like. I believe that leaps years should be a period of celebration and self discovery. In the long run, it’ll add motivation and decrease the chances of transferring classes or dropping out into a college career because you know how tough the real world is and how sheltered a college campus can be. Well done and I wish you the best. This post was awesome!
P.S I honestly think we should just get rid of subsidized government loans altogether. I don’t think everyone is mean’t to go to college and not everybody needs it for their purposes and that’s perfectly OK. I digress a bit but I just thought I should add a solution that can potentially solve this education debacle we are currently experiencing. Take care!
Girl… I loved this post. I agree wholeheartedly. The college system is an archaic form of education that is selling unrealistic ideals to our youth. I particularly enjoyed your every detailed characterization of what the average college student are graduating with. I will happily confess that I have close to 51k in debt and I have absolutely no idea when and how I’ll be able to pay that off. I can’t say if the amount of money I drained into my college education will ever pay itself off but what I can say is that I wouldn’t have discovered that things I have discovered about myself if I didn’t challenge myself academically. I LOVE the fact that you took a leap year after high school. I cannot preach that enough and I am too familiar with the negative stigma it brings along with it. I didn’t take a leap year but I did drop out for a year to see if college was something I really wanted and needed. I somehow managed to graduate so that’s good.
I totally respect your decision to go back to college when the time is right. I also shared your concern of not graduating with most of your high school friends but you know what? You’re way ahead of the curve. I’ve met so many college graduates working dead end jobs and just pays the bills. If that’s the kind of job graduates settles with then YES, their education was a total waste of time and they’ll probably never pay off their 30k-70K debt. Finding things about yourself, about what you like, what you don’t like is what college is about. You spent so much time investing yourself into a field that you’re already passionate about and I think that’s really cool. It doesn’t matter if you graduate in 4 years or 10 years. The important thing is you found something you want to do and you’re realistic in terms of what the economy and the job market is like. I believe that leaps years should be a period of celebration and self discovery. In the long run, it’ll add motivation and decrease the chances of transferring classes or dropping out into a college career because you know how tough the real world is and how sheltered a college campus can be. Well done and I wish you the best. This post was awesome!
P.S I honestly think we should just get rid of subsidized government loans altogether. I don’t think everyone is mean’t to go to college and not everybody needs it for their purposes and that’s perfectly OK. I digress a bit but I just thought I should add a solution that can potentially solve this education debacle we are currently experiencing. Take care!
This is all to true. I wish I had gone on a bit of a crooked path too, before college. I don’t regret my actual college experience, but it has since caused me a lot of issues with loans. I didn’t know any better. Good luck and go back to school when you are ready!
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I also felt awkward and … I’m not really sure what the word is… when I saw my friends graduating in England, while I was laying on a beach in Maldives and exploring local islands between teaching English to 5 year olds.
I’m also happy for my friends. Studying wasn’t easy for them, what with life’s problems thrown in. Now they’re fighting for an internship, like you said.
Well now obviously, I mean, I’m not exactly “successful”. But, I don’t live at home (and haven’t since I was 16), I’ve got money in the bank- I’m financially independent, I guess most importantly: I’m happy.
I think it will take a few years of hard work before I can talk about myself as being “successful”. It’s not a proud thing for me to admit I dropped out of university. But I did and I wouldn’t be where I am today if I didn’t.
Well written piece, I enjoyed reading.
Look, the whole mentality of finding a career you love love LOVE is where you’ve been misled. You already know there are no jobs in anthropology so if you study it, don’t act surprised when the there’s no job at the other end of the tunnel. Do a STEM degree. Fun? Not really. Jobs at the end? Hell yes. Those two answers are intrinsically correlated, by the way. If you’re worried about student loans, and you should be, pick a degree with the result in mind.