College planning is an important step that must be taken before pursuing college and preparing for your career. College can be both academically and financially challenging, so it’s important to know why you’re going and what your limitations are. I write this to bring up an article that I’ve found on InsideHigherEd.com that talks about the importance of student counseling and how it brings a rise in the college-going rate. Now the reason I bring this up is because of two reasons. One, I want to discuss a potential danger here; and two, I want to explain why I’m creating a resource to help aid you in your college pursuits.
Now I have to admit, the article that I’ve mentioned above is a little slanted. If your read the article, you’ll notice words like “advantaged” or “underrepresented”, which are normally used to victimize certain individuals or so-called minority groups. It’s so easy to victimize ourselves, but it can be so destructive as it leads us to believe that we apparently lack something physically or socially when in reality, we really don’t. In the article, a large emphasis is made on the increase of the college-going rate, or the number of students enrolling in colleges. As I’ve mentioned before, colleges have been offering tuition discounts because of the lowering of the enrollment rate; so inversely, wouldn’t pushing a rise in the college-going rate directly affect the cost of admission? It’s economics at work. Also, shouldn’t financial limitations be a major factor in applying for college? I mean, if we pushed students to go to Harvard or Duke only to come back owing hundreds of thousands in loans, what happens then? If they can’t land a job in their desired career field, not only will they have to default on those loans, but they will also have difficultly obtaining a low-income job because they would be deemed as ‘overqualified’.
Maybe I’m being presumptuous here, but I believe there’s a mistake in looking at college as a religious calling on society. I think it’s misleading for our public education system to make students believe that getting a degree is the equivalent of finding the holy grail and it’s irresponsible on their part for giving students very little direction as to what to do when they’re in college. Actually, as I think of it, do they even explain to you what to do AFTER you get your degree? I think with all the effort they put into pushing everyone to go to college, it becomes an afterthought. Now I’m by no means saying that everyone should avoid going to college altogether; if I was, I wouldn’t be wasting my time here. I believe that having a college education is valuable when it comes to pursuing what you love and what you plan to do with your career; but chances are, if you really love what you do, you probably won’t even need to go to college. I personally would like to go back to college myself and pursue a degree in professional writing, but I’m waiting until I’m ready financially before going back into the grinder. In the meantime, I’ve working on a couple of projects (this blog is one of them) to add to my portfolio.
So really, my whole purpose here is to give you this: direction. I’m not here to push you to go to college, nor am I here to discourage you from doing so. I’m just here to help guide you through college and help prepare you for your career. If you plan on going to college, you must have a ‘plan’ before you go there and you must know what it is that you ‘plan’ to do with your degree when you finish. Research is important, so knowing where to go and what to do would be the first step to being successful. This is why I’m here.
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