Sitting on the other side, with a writing degree in hand, I can honestly say that it was not worth it.  The economy and the digital revolution have rendered my degree worthless, after being told my whole life that any degree is better than no degree.  I was laid off from an office job after a reorganization, have not made enough with my freelance writing to foot the bills and would love a crappy low-paid job that college is supposed to protect you from. I’ve had nothing but crappy jobs since I graduated.

The real kicker is that I spent 2.5 years learning skills that my advisors and teachers assured me would lead to a good job in the publishing industry. After months of freelance writing, I come to find that I love the art of writing, but hate the business of it.  Professional writing is all about lowering your standards and skills to fit someone else’s vision.  School didn’t prepare me for that.  School allows you to work towards your highest potential, but the corporate world wants mindless, easy-to-market drivel.  I’m now looking at using a handful of old medical certifications to go back into health care to actually help people for a living (certifications I gained on the job and from a tech school, mind you.)   

Even in High School, I had no guidance. I’ve even made a Academic Adviser cry before about my explanation of how things are going for me and how I felt about the whole, “College& Overall Life” Even at my crappy Community College, the Academic Adviser there told me, “I’ve never heard such deep things from any student” Although that made me feel unique, still did nothing for me.

MY SEARCH

I was looking for better ways to finance my return to college and my eyeballs already hurt from all the fruitless searching. Scholarship searches are not helping because many of them are small potatoes and sweepstakes to boot. I need a more sure-fire way to fund my education so I don’t have to drop out again because I can’t afford the tuition hike of $2k per year and I don’t have to stress about not having options left for when the surprises do come up. What I need are sponsors.

BACKGROUND

I too struggled with the “quitting is for losers” and that cost me an entire year. I had a good GPA my first year for being relatively unprepared, but I had to work my butt off for it. I decided that it didn’t make any sense to pay people to torture me. If someone were to pay me as much money as college students are paying colleges, you’d better believe I would be expected to bend over backwards … not the other way around. I should not be working that hard to please them above and beyond fairness. I gave the college a second chance by staying another year, but the academic unfairness (lack of standards) simply got worse. I gained a lot from the networking and the getting out from under my parents’ roof, etc., but none of that gets reflected in the transcript or the expensive piece of paper employers ultimately wish to see on your resume.

ARTICLE
1) Homesickness and Feeling that You Don’t Fit In — Was not homesick at all, couldn’t wait to get out and stay out. Fit in very well with the students.
2) Educational Burnout — Burned out and thoroughly disheartened. Not because of the workload but because the results weren’t worth the workload. All grades are subjective in the end and that’s a lot of @$$ kissing on top of the studying just to hope they give you better than a B and didn’t put trick questions on the test that they didn’t cover in the curriculum or indicate you should study on your own. If you got an A for knowing your stuff and handing in the work, that would have been worth the effort. Even if the course was pointless (since all subjects could be interesting at a certain slant) if I knew that when I put in a certain amount of effort I’d get a certain amount of return, then it could be 4 years or 12 years and it wouldn’t make a difference because I’d find the steam to stay ahead … as opposed to putting in a certain amount of effort and getting a certain percentage chance of a random amount of return.
3) Academic Preparedness — Was prepared for the workload and the intensity. Was not prepared for finding the extra time and money to shower professors with lavishing gifts so they would actually read your paper and grade it appropriately.
4) Personal or Family Issues — Yes, those were stressful, but didn’t really affect my level of success at college.
5) Financial Constraints — Many people shared stories of how they were thrown for a loop and blindsided by the college. I suppose I was naive to think that I could plan well enough to budget for college and thereby budget my time well during college not worrying about surprise changes to the deal mid-course and just focus on my studies instead of securing extra jobs and literally not having the time to study, much less sleep. Had I known, maybe I wouldn’t have entered into the deal to begin with. Then again, I was only 17 when I went to college, so I didn’t legally have much of an alternative either.
6) Too Much Fun Not Enough Education — Education through fun! Not enough fun equals not enough education. I didn’t booze it up or go to house parties or take part in those sorts of time-wasting and potentially embarrassing things. Went to a couple just to see what it was all about and decided against it. No more escorting drunkards back to their dorms for me.
7) School Isn’t a Good Academic Fit — The class sizes varied as much as the professors’ teaching styles and level of experience. That sort of required adaptability I could handle although sometimes I thought it would have been more worth my tuition if the T.A.s taught the course instead and they fired the professor.
Setting Sights on the Wrong Major — I was, and still am, interested in everything but I was always , and still am, very goal-driven. I picked out my main degree early and attached another degree and crammed a minor into the plan. I had a “don’t judge a book by it’s cover” attitude to the strange requirements of my degrees and simply treated it as something necessary to reach the end goal, not a chore or bothersome. However, the lack of alignment and application to my major of choice was highlighted when the courses turned out to be crappy and the professors inept to boot. What was I paying for again? Even if this otherwise might have been inline with a different major, if I had selected that major, I would still have thought that course to have been a total waste of time, effort, funds, classroom space, all the work it took to book the course, and all the paper that course number and description was ever printed on. There should at least be a refund policy like when you pay to attend a program or event in the community.
9) No Guidance or Mentors — Dand right! There weren’t enough of them in existence at the school. There were only two and they didn’t cover all the subjects I needed them to be able to cover with me and they didn’t have the time, but I made them my academic advisers as quickly as possible. Little good that did, right?
10) External Demands, Particularly Within Part Time or full Time Employment. — Trading hours for dollars at close to minimum wage at that state, which meant below minimum wage for my state and having the lower wage for most of the year pay for the higher living expense for the whole year, during and between school. Plus tuition hikes.
11) Time to Move Out — This wasn’t as specific as it could have been, but I loved the snow, never really seeing much of it at home.

THE ROLE OF TEACHERS

People here have posted that it’s not the teachers’ jobs to hold students’ hands. As a teacher now, I believe that no matter how much I get paid to teach, it is my responsibility to teach and teach well. I can’t force knowledge into others, but I can endeavor to understand their struggles and invest in them, especially those who have potential (and an experienced teacher would be able to identify such students and distinguish them from the ones who aren’t developmentally ready yet). The mark of an effective instructor is his or her ability to impart required learning with the minimum amount of effort on the part of the student. Should the student work hard? Of course! Should the student kill him/herself over academics? I think not. Way to sap all love of any subject out of a person. Teachers need to inspire and perpetuate love of learning.

THE ROLE OF HIGH SCHOOL

High school should prepare students for life because that’s when public education available to all tax-paying citizens end, but most human brains aren’t fully developed until they are in their mid-twenties. Not a surprise considering the raging hormones during the high school years, it’s a wonder any teenager has the self control to study and get good grades.

THE ROLE OF COLLEGE

In contrast, college is “higher education” and should be about the learning. It should be a privilege that one can partake in if they have accrued the funding to do so (and would therefore spend their money and time wisely). But today’s reality is that college is a business … but not a traditional business that provides the advertised service(s). Colleges recruit from a population that have very few candidates who might be developmentally ready to take full advantage of the experiences college can provide. Their expectations are often above and beyond what their customers can deliver. (Wait, who’s doing the delivering?) Because of this, it is clear that most colleges have questionable motives. Unless colleges start to switch their target audience to a more developmentally appropriate group, they would be setting up the population for very expensive failures and therefore has an unethical business structure that is bad for the nation — the debtor nation known as the U.S.A.

If we instead accepted that colleges are supposed to prepare us for successful careers, it would certainly be an investment if colleges guaranteed job placement above a certain wage bracket post-graduation, but that would never happen. This would solve the problem that many people spend so much on their education and spend the decades following staring down student loan statements, struggling to repay them and questioning the worth of the degree.

The other failure is marketing college as the solution for everyone and a certificate of status requirement to obtain jobs with higher status so we can all work with snobbier people who are even more fake and narrow-minded than you’ve ever associated with before to hide the fact that they are just as in-debt as you are now. Again, rage against the machine aside, that is the current reality. We either bite the bullet and go through with it like everyone else and pray that it was worth it in the end, or we can ignore it and still find success, or we can be bitter for the rest of our lives.

SO WHY GO BACK?

I’m not going to rub it into other people’s faces since I don’t really perceive either dropping out of college or staying in college and finishing with a degree to be a moral failure. My feeling is you don’t really know what you would decide until you are actually faced with the situation, so there have been some judgmental posts from people who haven’t been there yet. Maybe they never will.

Sometimes the system is so corrupt, you have to get a little dirty to get to a vantage point where you can actually help fix it from. Since you can’t practice law without a license and you can’t get into the bar exam without a four-year degree anymore, I really don’t have a choice. But maybe once I get there, I’ll be able to pave the way for future generations to not have to jump through all these expensive and unfair hoops just to get to contribute to society in the capacity they want.

If you can find a way around going to college (Lord knows I’ve tried) and still get to do what you want, don’t do waste the money! Don’t be in debt! Don’t put that kind of ethical and financial strain on your life!

MEANWHILE …

Anyone know anyone who would be willing to sponsor/partially sponsor me through college?

Honestly, its just way too stressful. During the finals I flunked almost all my subjects due to the poor organization of the Exam dates, determined by the college itself.

There’s actually much more to mention but I suppose this information should suffice in order to give all you guys a general idea of college. (Or at least, my college)