Is Higher Education Worth the Price?

 IS HIGHER EDUCATION WORTH THE PRICE?

This week we learned about higher education and the way they run. It is not a surprise to this generation about how much college costs. I live in New York City close to NYU, whose tuition is around $72,000 per year. I am from an area in Northern Virginia where your University matters. People care about the name and brand of a school, and if they have not heard of it, they give you looks. Community members pushed this prestige on you, and when I applied for college, I realized that I didn’t care about the prestige; I cared about the most beneficial education. They also care deeply about what you are going to school for. My siblings went to school for information systems and biomedical engineering, and when I, the black sheep of the family, went to school for dance, my parents continuously convinced me not to because I am not guaranteed a job. In their defense, this was at a time after covid when the arts were trying to recover. This unit has convinced me that no matter the percentages promised by colleges thrown at prospective students, it does not mean anything. I am majoring in dance with a minor in political science, both liberal arts degrees. David Foster Wallace says the most beneficial degree currently is a liberal arts degree because you are specialized in only one area of thought. Liberal arts give you a little bit of every area of study. In this day in age, employers are looking for applicants who are versatile in various aspects.

This unit also showed me that there are different motives for going to college. Some want to go to school to fulfill their childhood dream occupation, some want to go to the same school as their family, some want to go to the most prestigious school, some want to party, and some don’t even wanna go to college, but their parents are making them. This extreme price of college is finally stopping people to take a second and think about why they are going to college and what they are trying to get out of it. Specifically, halting those who it hurts financially. If rich people want to pay $72,000 per year, they will, and who says they are wrong for that? The issue is with the universities or businesses themselves. They constantly raise the price every year to make up for the entirely new buildings with innovative technology to incentivize new students to come. This only makes the competitiveness for prestige more powerful. Each college wants to be ranked higher than the other. Another issue rising is how this business model is effecting teachers. Teachers want to be incentivized with the availability to conduct their own research and have it funded. This inherently hurts the students because the professors' focus is not on the students but themselves.