Riding recessions with a college degree

The safest way to ensure economic stability is to earn a college degree. That's what we have been hearing since a very young age. Data released by the Department of Labor solidifies this point. I also came across a very interesting article in the Wall Street Journal detailing the trends and data.

It's not only that the college educated earn more over their lives, a staggering $1 million more on average, as compared with folks who do not hold college degrees, but that they are far more likely to keep their jobs.

The gap widens even further in times of recession. Not only in terms of amount of income, but also in the unemployment rate. The unemployment rate for workers 25-and-older with a bachelor's degree or higher was 4.6% in August 2010, for example, compared with 10.3% for those with just a high-school diploma. That's a huge 5.7-percentage-point gap. This is more than twice the gap that was seen during pre-recession times in 2007.

Laid-off college graduates are also finding work faster. Their median duration of unemployment was 18.4 weeks as of August, compared with 27.5 weeks for high-school grads. Three years ago, that figure was roughly the same for both groups—9.5 weeks and 9.6, respectively. And among the worst-off 25-and-older workers, the 5.2 million who have been out of work six months or more, only 19% are those who graduated from college, even though that group makes up a third of the work force.

All these statistics drive home the fact that ultimately, the safest way to survive and sail through a recessionary era is to invest time, money and heart towards a solid college education. It not only will ensure a stable job, but also help in case you end up having the misfortune of losing one.

Why is college so important?

As young children never wanting to let go of our parents’ fingers, we all dreamed big. Our parents’ love and encouragement made us believe that we could be the President. The Movie Star. The richest person on earth. As we grow older, these dreams are often shattered by the reality of probability and the awareness of opportunities. No matter what our future goals, we are told one thing. “You must go to college to be successful”.

This seems like the most difficult statement to understand as we are comfortable teenagers protected by the doors of our homes and the walls of the familiar high schools. Why do I have to leave? Why do I have to start over? Going to school with the same friends for years, and having parents or guardians to guide us seems like too good of a deal to leave behind. We all think that we have excellent maturity and can handle anything that life throws our way. However, it is sometimes important to wonder, have we really experienced everything that life has to offer?

That’s where college comes in and offers us something vitally important-experience. Experience makes us wiser. Experience makes us stronger, and more willing to persevere. Taking the sometimes impossibly difficult classes, meeting people from all over the world, and travelling to the most remote places, each day of the 4 years of college brings something new, something we have never experienced before. The long exam week, the diverse student body, the community activities done through various clubs, team work established between peers, knowledge gained through experiments, relationships and networks created - all of this and more changes us into strong, skilled citizens. We are then truly equipped to handle all of the world’s problems.

President Obama attended Occidental College, got is BA from Columbia University, and studied Law at Harvard. Julia Roberts attended Georgia State University. Finally, Bill Gates attended Harvard. Suddenly, the dreams of being the future president, a movie start, and the richest man in the world don’t seem so impossible. While it is true that we grow the most in the first few months after we are born, college is the time for one to grow the most as a person. Without this growth, the remote dreams of our childhoods seem to remain distant.

As high school seniors it is difficult to understand why we must work so hard to get into a college of our dreams. The grades aren’t enough to get us in. We must have extracurricular activities, do well on the SATs or the ACTs, fill out numerous applications, etc. However, the simple word ‘college’ does not justify the prestigious and significant portion of our lives that the word brings with it. College is important. College is crucial. Why? Well, there is no better way to seek an answer to that question than to live through it.

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