Will Boyd

Diana Watkins

Comp II 12:30 MWF

16 April 2018

Subject Line: Are college students really prepared for the future?

To Whom This May Concern,

Well I’d first like to thank you for giving my letter an opportunity to be read and my personal
opinion on the matter of properly preparing students for college, as well as preparing them for
the labor market’s workforce. I am a twenty-one year old college student who attends college in
the state of Oklahoma. I will admit that I am not a citizen of Oklahoma, nor did I grow up
anywhere around the state of Oklahoma. I came to this state to receive a higher education for a
couple of reasons; Oklahoma has a far higher number of agriculturally inclined citizens than
nearly any other state, and many students who are involved with these avenues or choose a
career path from the agricultural industry come to Stillwater, making it one of the easiest places
to create friends and connections for the future while attending school. On top of that, the
agricultural division at Oklahoma State University is one of the best in the country.
There is one thing that is constantly provoking my thoughts to run towards my future financial
stability and the opportunities I will have after completing my degree at Oklahoma State
University. The thought of obtaining my degree and still not having any form of financial
stability after college worries me. Even though I may have built many connections and opened
opportunities for myself amongst the agricultural industry, I still wonder if it will be enough to
really quench my thirst for financial stability after my coursework is done. Has college opened as
many opportunities as I think it has, or could I have just went to work straight out of high school
and achieved the same financial well being in other ways? Regardless of my situation, there are
many other college students who have the same worries and fears that I do. A statistic provided
by the Bureau of Labor statistics states an estimated percentage of 2.2-2.5% of college graduates
are unemployed (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2018). Even when a college graduate may be
gainfully employed, there’s a decent percentage of alumni who have to settle for a job which
doesn’t pertain to their degree. A statistic published by the Washington Post and the U.S. Bureau
of the Census confirms out of the 62.1% of employment opportunities that require a college
degree, only 27% of college graduates actually get a job in their field of study after the complete
their coursework(Plumer, Bureau of the Census, 2013). College students entering the higher
education realm often have little to no idea what they will do after they receive their diploma,
whether their degree is relevant to an industry that is lucrative of course was their choice, but
shouldn’t we push students whose goal is to achieve great financial stability towards career
avenues in which will actually provide security? If a student’s main goal is to achieve financial
stability from attending college, I think students should understand that following a particular
“passion” may or may not lead to what a student is in search of after attending college. Liz
Freedman of Butler University writes in an article, “…the fact that choosing a major is a choice
that should be intentional and based on knowledge of one’s self, and when the wrong choice is
made, the implications can be harsh. Ideally, a major will leave a student academically
successful, as well as fulfill academic, personal, and vocational goals”(Freedman, 2013).
The idea that college graduates often make more money than students who have just
graduated has became so popular amongst our recent generations that students are attending
college in order to fulfill not only their hopes, dreams, and aspirations. In most cases, they are
also fulfilling their parent’s dream of sending their student to college as well. Not every student
in the world is cut out to be a college student, everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses
as an individual and school may or may not be one of them. Even when students get to college,
they may not know what they want to study. In fact, seventy-five percent of students who attend
college change their major at least once before they have finished their degree (Gordon, 1995).
Even though this statistic may be an older one, I still have think it holds great relevancy because
of the fact that no matter the generation attending higher education, a college students maturity at
twenty-one in 2018 is still the same maturity level that students who were twenty-one in 1995
had. This also ties into another question I have, if I can see the same trend in my time at college
as was being seen in 1995, shouldn’t we change something in the educational system to prepare
and provoke a mature thinking process to help students decide what they would like their future
career to be. Tuition and the cost of attendance to any form of higher education has sky rocketed.
Still, students still come to college, undecided, unprepared, and misinformed about the choices
they are potentially about to make. It is a waste of time, money and energy to send a student to
school who has no true primary focus on what they want to achieve.
Another issue that may not directly correlates with unemployment but is still an issue of
debate is the amount of money students make after graduating. Student loans leave graduates in
thousands and thousands of dollars of debt, with high interest rates. with that, graduates know
they will practically bury themselves in student debt in order to graduate college but still do it for
their personal achievement. Many students are going deep into debt without properly knowing
the ramifications behind what may happen if they are not hired directly out of college. An article
associated with the U.S News gives reference to a study shown by 500 college students who are
in student loan debt, “…the group surveyed three sets of respondents: one made up
of 500 current students between the ages of 18 and 24, one of 518 former students between the
ages of 18 and 40 and one made up of 544 parents of current college students. The current
students said they expect to have between $39,000 and $42,000 in student loan debt by the time
they graduate, but expect to pay off that debt by the age of 33, on average. The group of former
students said they hold an average of $30,000 in debt, but don't expect to pay it off until they're
41 (Bidwell, 2014)”. College is designed to help you achieve higher academic skills and prepare
you for a job amongst the labor industry, not to put you so far deep into debt that it takes ten
years to pay it off.
When I graduated high school, my parents wanted me to attend law school. My parents
basically told me to take the next ten years of my life to prepare and educate myself to have a
prosperous life. So realistically, it takes four years to graduate from a University, at least another
two or three to graduate from law school, and then after I finally take the Bar exam, I would
potentially get hired by a law firm with a sustainable wage if, I was at the top of my field. To
some, it may not be worth it to study and pursue a degree in the law field, but at least it would be
a degree that serves huge upside potential later on in life.The problem is, not every student can
be at the top of their class, and investing that much into ones education may be risky if they are
unable to find a position in their field after college. College students often don’t want to invest
the first ten years of their life into something so complex as a law degree, yet they still want to be
extremely successful and financially stable. Teachers and parents alike have been pushing their
students to “follow their passion” and by attending college, these students think they are entitled
to a higher paying salary and success. Students are pushed away from the idea of going directly
into the labor force out of high school, and essentially told that you cannot become successful
without a college degree. If a college student has any sense for what happens in the real world
labor force, they will understand that some degrees are quite honestly worthless to what really
goes in the work force.
What should we do in order for students to realize their full potential prior to attending
college? I think students should be provided with more opportunities to learn about career paths
and success stories with people who did not attend college. An article published by The Atlantic
reviews a poll provided by The College Board/National JournalNext America and it states “Just
49 percent of those polled said they believed "young people in the United States today need a
four-year college degree in order to be successful," while 48 percent said they did
not”(Brownstein, 2014). Let students decide if attending college is right for them rather than
pushing college as a social norm. College is not particularly something everyone needs to
graduate from in order to be successful in America, or even globally for that matter. Students are
piling up debt, and investing into a future they’re not even sure is right for them. Students who
understand classwork, and put forth diligence to their studies will succeed in the classroom, but
not every student has the drive and focus to do that. I think society has put too much emphasis on
you have to attend a form of higher education if you want to be successful. There’s plenty
avenues in the labor force in which are perfectly lucrative, but students don’t know about them
because society’s primary focus is to send students to college. Everyone should understand the
ramifications of attending college if you are not successful. Whether it be from a financial loan
aspect, or simply falling behind on a real career path in which they can truly succeed at. It’s
important to understand the whole aspect of what could potentially happen to our economic
stimulation of our country if the whole future generation is entombed in debt. Push students to
embrace their talents, and make use of them in not only a beneficial way to themselves, but
beneficial to the rest of the labor industry as well.
 Works Cited

Bidwell, Allie. “Student Loan Expectations: Myth vs. Reality.” U.S. News & World Report, U.S.

News & World Report, 7 Oct. 2014, www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2014/10/07/

student-loan-expectations-myth-vs-reality.

Freedman, Liz. “The Pennsylvania State University Division of Undergraduate Studies.” The

Mentor, 28 June 2013, dus.psu.edu/mentor/2013/06/disconnect-choosing-major/.

Gordon, V. N. (1995). The undecided college student: An academic and career advising

challenge (2nd. ed.). Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.

Journal, Ronald Brownstein and National. “Are College Degrees Inherited?” The Atlantic,

Atlantic Media Company, 11 Apr. 2014, www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/04/are-

college-degrees-inherited/360532/.

Plumer, Brad. “Only 27 Percent of College Grads Have a Job Related to Their Major.” The

Washington Post, WP Company, 20 May 2013, www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/

2013/05/20/only-27-percent-of-college-grads-have-a-job-related-to-their-major/?noredirect=on.

“Table A-4. Employment Status of the Civilian Population 25 Years and over by Educational

Attainment.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 6 Apr. 2018,

www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t04.htm.