Finally, Americans have realized the importance of attending college and even attaining a post-graduate degree. Higher education can lead to many benefits in your life, including a better career and higher income. More than 80% of Americans said that pursuing higher education is very important to get ahead in life. About 66% wished they have gone to college and believed that it would have improved their chances at a higher income.
Image by Dariusz Sankowski
It’s not too late to pursue your dreams. There are plenty of online postgraduate education courses. You can still work in the morning and learn online at night. You can squeeze this into your time. While the sacrifices might be enormous now, the benefits of having a college or postgraduate degree will last you for a lifetime.
Career Development
Are you satisfied with your position now? Do you think you can do better? Most organizations are willing to promote their people but only up to a certain position. If you want to go higher the corporate ladder, you have to back it up with your academic credentials. Just look at some of those in the higher positions. Some of them are younger than you and have less experience than you. But because they have college and postgraduate degrees, the company prioritized giving them the top spots.
Even if you aren’t sure what kind of career you should pursue, being in an academic environment will broaden your horizon. It will make you explore your options. Being surrounded by people involved in the academe will influence you to choose a profession worth pursuing.
Income Generation
What do people want most when they work? They want to make money. That drives people to go to college, pursue a degree, and even think about adding to their skills. Having a college or postgraduate degree ups your chances of getting paid more. The research said that people who graduated from college earn more money in their lifetime than their counterparts who hold a high school diploma.
High school graduates can earn between $30,000 and $40,000 a year but college graduates can earn more than $50,000 annually. The gap widens as more people enter the workforce. College graduates, of course, have bigger chances of climbing the corporate ladder compared to people who did not pursue higher education.
Skills Expansion
Attending college also expands your skills. You’ll gain more knowledge in a broad range of subjects. You’ll also advance your experiences as you get more exposed to your professors and classmates. It allows you to exercise critical and abstract thinking. In a classroom setting, you are free to express yourself. That prepares you for a life in the corporate setting.
Once you join the corporate world, you’ll be tasked with jobs that you have no idea about. But if you spent four years in college, you will bring with you years of practice of facing the unknown. In college, you will be assigned to topics you have zero knowledge about. You will learn how to do research and learn the ropes of topics that you feel inadequate. But that is essentially what a college degree will give you the confidence that everything can be learned. You will be armed with the tools you need to learn new skills and develop them as you go along.
Sense of Accomplishment
Finishing high school is an obligation. It is mandatory for Americans to attend high school until they are 16 years old. After that, they are off to see the world. But pursuing college and even something higher than a bachelor’s degree is a choice you will make for yourself. You will apply for college scholarships and take on student debt. That sense of accomplishment is your pride. It will make you confident that you can pursue whatever you want in life.
Pursuit of Passions
People think that arts and writing shouldn’t be pursued in college. If you are already a good writer in high school, why should you take creative writing classes or journalism in college? But pursuing your passions also takes time. A college environment can give you that. It will give you the time you need to nurture your passions and find out what you want to do. Developing one’s writing styles is every bit as important as becoming an engineer or doctor.
On top of the good opportunities that may open up to you when you have a college degree, you will also feel more fulfilled. This is going to be one of the most important milestones in your life. And clearly, as surveys showed, it’s also financially rewarding.
