Is College Really Worth It?

In this day and age, there are plenty of debates about whether college is necessary to further your career. With many jobs becoming obsolete because of computers, apprenticeships, entrepreneurs, and lower demands for college education, many careers don’t require college educations.

Now this is not to say that a college degree (associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s, doctorate, etc.) isn’t valuable. I think it all depends on a person’s career path. For years we’ve seen just as many people drop out of college or even completely skip college and have successful careers, as we’ve seen college graduates become successful in their field of interest.

Athletes like Kobe Bryant and LeBron James completely skipped college and went straight to the NBA out of high school. Both of them have now gone on to receive multi-million dollar endorsements and have even started to pursue their own business ventures. Even some of our most notable creators in technology like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of college before pursuing their own creative ideas. But what do these four men have in common? They were all able to find their niche, figure out the means to pursue it, and capitalize on their success. For Kobe and LeBron, their niche was playing the game of basketball. Their means to pursue the highest level of basketball (the NBA) did not require a college education (at least not until 2006). For Jobs and Zuckerberg, they were able to find their niche in computer/software programming and engineering. At that time, the means to pursue the field did not directly require them to complete their college education. As a result, they were both able to make technological advancements that were revolutionary.

While pursuing your passion is the one of the most rewarding feelings, I think finding that passion may be the most difficult for some. It’s much easier to make the next step towards your goals if you have direction, but if you don’t, you may be stuck finding out what you were put on this earth to do. On the other side, some people have their passion figured out, but lack the resources to pursue it. Maybe they can’t afford college, or can’t afford to purchase the tools they need to succeed.

At the end of the day, there really doesn’t seem to be a set blueprint on how much education you need to further your career. It also seems like society is beginning to push the importance of college education to the side, especially with the rise in tuition prices and the rise of people building their own businesses. So whatever career path a person should choose, I think it’s important to find your niche and do whatever you can to be the best qualified man or woman for the job.