Student Debt: Success or Scam
In American society, having a college degree holds weight. Working towards a college degree shows employers that students are motivated to succeed. A college degree can determine raises, well-paying careers, and most importantly success. Attending college is highly encouraged by teachers, parents, friends and other mentors that students come across on a daily basis. ‘Successful’ is a word that everyone wants to describe themselves as, and American society says that a college education is one of the steps that can help students move in the right direction towards success. Every person is different, which means different personal and finical issues. Depending on the person, college can either be worth the time and money or not.
Person A, is an example of positive effects of attending college. Person C, is an example of the negative effects of attending college. College tuition is very expensive, public university tuition is averaged at $25, 290, and private university tuition is averaged at $50,900. Person A has a finically stable background and money saved, so the price of tuition is not a problem. Person B does not have a stable background and no money saved due to personal issues, so the price of tuition is a challenge so they have to take out student loans so they can attend college. Students choose to go to college so they have more opportunity to choose their career. Person A, chooses the career of their choice because they enjoy it and salary. Person B wants to choose a certain career but it raises the tuition so they choose another career that they do not enjoy as much but it has a good salary. “Students in the sciences, engineering, computing, premed programs, and the fine arts often pay more. For example, at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, students enrolled in the College of Engineering pay up to $5,000 more in tuition than students pursuing other majors” (College Data.) Student loans are a factor of college. Students take out student loans if they do not have the money to pay for their college tuition. Students take out money from loaners who lend them the money to attend college, in return after the student has graduated college they must pay back the loans plus interest. Interest rates vary by the loaner, undergraduate degrees interest rates vary around 4.45% and graduate degrees interest rates vary around 6.00%. Person A either has to borrow a little amount of money in loans or none at all. Person C is not finically stable, they have to borrow student loans to pay off their college tuition. Student debt is a huge issue in America, it is one of the largest debts America encounters. “For the 2013-14 school year, the government sank $126 billion into undergraduate student aid” (MoneyWatch.)
Students attend college so they can establish a steady career. When college graduates apply for careers, most careers look at what college the graduate attended, college recognition. Person A graduated from Harvard University as a chemistry and physics major. Harvard University is one of the most prestigious colleges in America, and has recognition. Harvard Universities tuition is $63,025. Person C graduated from South Texas College also as a chemistry and physics major. The tuition at South Texas College is $11,892. Although South Texas College has good reviews and is a college it does not have the same recognition as Harvard University. If Person A and Person C both applied for a job for chemistry and physics, Person A would most likely get the job. “The rankings, it turned out, mattered a great deal. The more elite a school, the better its alums’ paychecks. The effect also increased over time. Among students who had graduated high school in 1980, those who had gone on to a top private university eventually made 20 percent more than their counterparts from bottom tier public school. For the class of 1972, the wage boost was just 9 percent” (The Atlantic.)
A career is not guaranteed with a college degree. Graduates that come out of college with a degree are still not guaranteed a job in the field that they studied and not guaranteed a high paying career right away. Graduates that go out in the real world need a job to pay for all of their expenses, beyond what they owe on their student loans. Although students attend college so they can have a higher chance – or even a chance at all at pursuing a career, the career is not always guaranteed. “Millions of college graduates who saw a degree as their ticket to a good-paying career and a secure life are working in jobs that do not require their education or even a high school diploma, sometimes leaving them with small wages to pay thousands in student debt, according to a new study” (The Denver Post.) Person A went to a prestigious college, got a career in their trained field, paid off their little amount in student debt and just bought a house. Person C went to an average college and could not find a job right after gradation so they had to get a job at a Target so they can pay off their necessities (rent, food, utilities, and personal purchases.) Six months after Person C graduated college, they needed to start paying off their student loans, which can be a huge inconvenience and challenge because Person C is making an average of $9.33 an hour.
It is hard enough for graduates to deal with the amount of debt they are in themselves, but people have personal problems that can make it more challenging. For Person A, college was worth it because, they had enough financial stability to choose a prestigious college that cost $63,025. Also, because Person A got a career in their field with a steady salary right after college which helped pay off their student loans. For Person C, college was not worth it because although they have a college degree they could not find a stable job. Since Student C took out student loans they are still obligated to pay back their student loans.
WORKS CITED PAGE
https://www.collegedata.com/cs/content/content_payarticle_tmpl.jhtml?articleId=10064
https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/loans/student-loans/student-loan-interest-rates/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-biggest-problems-with-americas-colleges/
https://www.harvard.edu/about-harvard/harvard-glance
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/does-it-matter-where-you-go-to-college/257227/
Rowan Counterintuitive 
A couple of early notes, SummerGirl.
You spend a lot of energy tossing a salad with the word Success in your introduction. The whole way through, I was waiting for you to put a spin on the term, as if it couldn’t be worth all the effort unless you were going to insist on a particular connotation of success. (The one I anticipated was: If success is “doing what is most meaningful with your life,” crushing college debt might make that sort of success impossible since it burdens graduates to take the job that offers the biggest paycheck, fulfilling or not.) Since that didn’t happen, I’m left with the impression that your Introduction is not suitable for this essay. Are you just stuck for an Intro?
I could help with that.
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A few comments about formatting. The WA department is transitioning to AP format for citations and Bibliographies. That means your section should be called References, not Works Cited. The bibliography notes should be in AP style.
In this class, we practice an informal in-text citation technique that does not use the parenthetical attributions at the end of the sentence. I crossed them out in your Definition essay weeks ago. I’ve crossed them out here also. Here’s what you need to do to fix one.
YOUR VERSION:
If Person A and Person C both applied for a job for chemistry and physics, Person A would most likely get the job. “The rankings, it turned out, mattered a great deal. The more elite a school, the better its alums’ paychecks. The effect also increased over time. Among students who had graduated high school in 1980, those who had gone on to a top private university eventually made 20 percent more than their counterparts from bottom tier public school. For the class of 1972, the wage boost was just 9 percent” (The Atlantic.)
COMP 2 VERSION:
If Person A and Person C both applied for a job for chemistry and physics, Person A would most likely get the job. According to Jordan Weissmann’s article in The Atlantic, where you go to college matters a great deal: “The more elite a school, the better its alums’ paychecks. The effect also increased over time. Among students who had graduated high school in 1980, those who had gone on to a top private university eventually made 20 percent more than their counterparts from bottom tier public school. For the class of 1972, the wage boost was just 9 percent.”
Use Citation Machine to generate the bibliographic entries for your References section:
http://www.citationmachine.net/
I plugged in your Atlantic magazine url (https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/does-it-matter-where-you-go-to-college/257227/) and instructed Citation Machine to generate an APA-style citation for a website. (Yes, it’s a magazine, but your source is the online publication, not the paper periodical.) The machine delivered me this APA-style citation:
References
Weissmann, J. (2012, May 17). Does It Matter Where You Go to College? Retrieved February 27, 2018, from https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/does-it-matter-where-you-go-to-college/257227/
That’s how it should look in what you were calling Works Cited.
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I’m removing your post temporarily from the Feedback Please category, Summergirl, to indicate to me that I have provided some feedback. You’re entitled to much more, and you need only ask for it by responding first to what I’ve said here, and then putting your post back in the Feedback Please category.
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Thank you so much for your help and feedback! And yes I was having some trouble with the introduction. Thanks!
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I’m glad I was helpful, SummerGirl. If you want recommendations for your Introduction, just ask, and place this post back in the Feedback Please category.
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