<p>Since many of you are probably in the labor-force and some of you went to college, I ask you what the purpose of college is supposed to be? </p>
<p>Most college majors aren’t really practical unless the student wants to teach at the high school level --in an area such as English Lit. or History, for example.-- or if the student wants to go on for masters or Ph.D. Otherwise, a college major doesn’t really prepare you for a job. </p>
<pre><code>Students are already exposed to a broad curriculm in high school by taking courses in English Literature, History, Math, Science, foreign languages and electives.
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<p>So over the last half-century, why has the percentage of people who go on to college been increasing? Most of the jobs that people obtain out of college don’t require any special knowledge that they don’t already know from high school. College costs a lot of money and time so why are high school graduates encouraged to go? Why do so many colleges in the United States exist?</p>
<p>Students already distinguish themselves in high school. Why do top high school students need to go to a college to prove something? </p>
<p>If most people go to college these days, then isn’t college like what high school was supposed to be? So now, people like at high school as inferior to what it used to be and they spend thousands of dollars to attend college, which could be called the “old high school.”</p>
<p>There are plenty of good reasons to go to college, and not many bad ones. There’s no one right purpose.</p>
<p>For me…it showed me that I could be happy. It helped me grow up. It introduced me to people who became closer than family. And it set me on a path where I could have a challenging and well-paying career. I learned a fair amount of classroom material, but that wasn’t the point for me, it was a (great) incidental benefit.</p>
<p>In actuality, most high school curriculums are not great, and they don’t prepare you for the real world. It isn’t difficult to find an A+ student in high school who took the easiest courses available. Also, some high school are not as difficult to graduate from as others are. GPAs and even standardized tests can be decieving. In high school, all you have to do is meet the requirements in order to get an A, and many classes are geared so that any student can pass if he or she does the work. Also, most of the people you meet in high school are a lot like yourself as you grew up with them in one area. They’re old news. </p>
<p>College is VERY different. You have to go way beyond what is expected of you in order to get an A, and much of the material taught in college isn’t taught in high school. The coursework is meant to make you think critically and broaden your mind (Pardon the cliché). Plus, many of the people on a college campus are not like youself and are from many different parts of the country and the world. They will teach you tolerance and force you to learn about new cultures as many of them will become your friends. College life teaches you how to live alone without the safety net of family down the street to fix all of your problems. Most of those “impractical” majors are practical majors in the end. It isn’t always the information that’s taught in the classroom that is important but reather the skills learned from doing the coursework. For example, a history major will not only learn facts and dates but also how to analyze a long reading, write well and to the point, and have the knowledge of past events to apply to future actions. Many of these skills are sought after in many fields making it so a history major is not limited to one particular field (i.e. teacher).</p>
<p>^^Not necessarily. We are talking about universities, not vocational schools.</p>
<p>The notion that a college education should also prepare you for a job is a relatively recent idea. For centuries universities mostly prepared well-off young gentlemen to be a scholars and philosophers. For something as mundane as getting job skills you apprenticed yourself to someone already doing that job.</p>
<p>There are many branches of scholarly knowledge that produce no particular job opportunities. And that’s fine, because college education is all about expanding the mind more than earning a paycheck.</p>
<p>The purpose of college, from the parents’ perspective, is to get their children out of the house until they have passed through the most annoying stage of adolescence.</p>
<p>Stantheman,
I said college is for improving your ability to think. I didn’t say incoming freshman didn’t know how to think. And it’s not the thinking required by standardized tests that I’m talking about.</p>
<p>In addition to depleting family savings, retirement accounts & assets, college has some real purposes.<br>
One of the most important purposes (in my mind) is for young people to be exposed to new ideas & people that are outside of what they have known & been exposed to up until that point–folks from all over the country & world that the student meets and needs to get along with. It also further refines students’ ability to identify & solve problems, using knowledge gained from many different settings.
Sometimes, it can even train folks for a career or just for more schooling. It is a time for young people to try out different “personas” if you will & figure out what they are in addition to being a S/D or BF/GF, explore subjects/areas of interest, stretch themselves intellectually, emotionally & physically. It can be quite an awesome opportunity!</p>
<p>Actually, no. I scored above a 1500 but I wouldn’t say that means I (or others) know how to think. College teaches you how to work well under pressure for four years, how to prepare yourself for a job in the real world (hopefully), how to think about things in a way different from your current viewpoint, how to communicate, how to live on your own (hopefully most ppl are moving away and not commuting!), how to discover yourself. Compared to high school, one has many options in college and can study whatever strikes their fancy. </p>
<p>And if you attend a good college, you will realize that high school is much easier and what you learn in high school is not comparable to what you learn in college.</p>
<p>I sometimes wonder whether some of the questions that are posted on the parents forum by students are merely for the purpose of soliciting information to plug into essays…which of course only demonstrates the truth in some of the responses appearing here that suggest that the purpose of college is to learn to think, an ability such a poster would clearly be lacking. </p>
<p>That being said and in a nutshell: College has changed over the years so that today it does more than just teach us to think (ie develop our ability to apply general knowledge to new situations, and to be creative and innovative); it also broadens our understanding of the world and helps us become more socially aware, moral and responsible individuals. In addition, it also often serves the purpose of training individuals for specific careers similar to but requiring more extensive training than can be provided in vocational/trade schools (eg, engineering, nursing, journalism, business). And of course, college can also help us develop a stronger sense of self by allowing us to pursue more fully interests that we are passionate about…</p>
<p>(taken from one of my own college essays 25 years ago)</p>