Is College Still Worth it?
Graham J. Rasmussen
Brigham Young University-Idaho
Professor Jason Deitz
3/22/2016
Is College Still Worth it? 2
Abstract
Since the beginning of time, all human beings have sought to learn more. In every era or
age of time, the educated have been looked at as superiors, wise, and better compared to
everyone else. Since early 1636 there has been colleges here in The United States, focusing on
educating students to help them become something better. They focused on creating clergymen,
lawyers, and physicians. After almost 400 years there are about 11 million colleges in function.
Now you can study whatever you would like, there are so many opportunities, but now there is
rising tuition. Students are coming out of college with more debt. The high 15% unemployment
rate is causing people to question, is school worth it or not? Is it still possible to benefit from
college? After reviewing the benefits, costs, and majors, this paper argues that college is worth it,
college is not for everyone, and that college is worth it only if you choose the correct major.
History
In 1636, Harvard the first college in the United States, was introduced. It was a college
that somewhat followed the model of Oxford and Cambridge of England, these schools focused
on religion and creating clergymen. Jeremy Anderberg wrote while discussing Harvard
University in 1636, “To a large degree, Harvard focused on training clergymen in order to
advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity, dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the
churches.” (Anderberg, 2014) In other words, universities in this time focused on creating
preachers, which was the most successful career during this era. It was very uncommon to go to
higher education for something else because other careers usually did not require schooling.
Careers required apprenticeships or on the job training. Men who wanted to be welders were
taught how when they received the job and they did not have to go to school for it.
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The other careers that Harvard helped create were lawyers, physicians, and public
officials. Harvard also studied the arts and music. In 1700, tuition was set at about 10 shillings
per quarter, which during the time was the same amount you would spend on a pair of shoes and
two pairs of stockings. By 1825 there was about 20 universities. This would include the
University of Virginia. The University of Virginia opened in 1825 and was an important part of
higher education’s history in the United States. Thomas Jefferson finished his time as a president
and started focusing his efforts on education. He believed that they needed to separate education,
from religion. He was in charge of creating the University of Virginia and made the prime focus
of the university, education not religion. Instead of focusing on clergymen, they focused on
becoming lawyers, doctors, scientists, and government leaders. This changed the aspect of most
universities and they began to become like the University of Virginia, separating themselves
from religion and focusing on education.
College still was not a very important part of a typical Americans’ life. College was
cheap, but parents believed it was better for their child to start working in the family business or
on the family farm instead of going on to pursue a college education. Working with in the family
business or on the family farm was more important to these families because they needed their
son’s/daughter’s help and they did not want to send them off to college and not have the help
needed. Therefore, in the 1900s’ colleges had to do some changing. One method they used was
changing the physical aspect of their colleges. Colleges studied what attracted people. In the
article Is College for Everyone? An Introduction and Timeline of College in America says,
“Believe it or not, part of this convincing came in the form of campus architecture. New wealth
as well as technological advancements in how buildings were constructed led to universities
becoming more and more visually appealing to potential students.” (Anderberg, 2014)
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Technological advancements in how buildings were constructed led to universities becoming
more pleasing to possible students. When the universities looked wealthier and expanded their
campus, it attracted the wealthier class to attend these colleges. By doing so, this helped parents
and students have the assumption that they would receive the finest education there and that it
was worth it because to the world, outside appearance means everything and the schools
understood that. In 1910 for the first time universities received more applications than they could
accept. They now grew so fast that they had to decline some applicants. The period in between
the wars of 1920-1944 increased from 250,000, to 1.3 million. This was because the universities
helped dramatically during WWI that the government gave donations, giving the universities the
opportunity to focus on college sports. This was the first time that colleges started to introduce
athletics into their schooling. College sports began to become very popular and many young
Americans loved sports. In return they were interested in playing at a higher level, or in other
words at a university. This helped these young Americans to have an interest in higher education
when before they would not have even thought of attending college. This helped college become
an interest for many young Americans and gave many colleges greater support and wealth from
spectators that were interested in sports.
They were booming during this era, it seemed like education would continue to do so
until post 1939 when World War II started. This changed colleges dramatically. Instead of giving
education they started research for military advancements. This is when the relationship between
universities and the U.S. government came into play. Since the universities gave their time and
research to help the war, just like after WWI, the United States gave funds and grants to the
universities that still help us today. When Jeremy Anderberg was writing about the war efforts
and universities, he said “With the success of the war efforts, the attention given to colleges after
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WWII in terms of funding and grants and bills passed led to increases in enrollment that continue
today.” (Anderberg, 2014) Even with help from the government, the schools still controlled all
the money, and this caused some problems from the students in 1972. This made it so not every
student was able to have all the privileges they deserved. This caused much frustration and like
most problems made students say “it’s not fair!” This started strikes and rebellion from the
students, therefore, The Basic Educational Opportunities Grants program was made. Making it so
the government, instead of giving the money to the university to control, gave it directly to the
students. This is known today as FASFA.
By 1980, the tuition rose to an all-time high and applications rose as well. This made the
applicants higher quality students who take their schooling seriously. Since then tuition has
