Hansoo Lee is co-founder and CEO of Magoosh, an online test prep company with products for the SAT, GRE, and GMAT.
The rising cost of higher education has driven student debt to worrisome levels. With the advancements in digital and online education, more and more would-be college students are seeking the inexpensive, individualized alternatives online.
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However, the benefits of higher education are still immense. Given the debate around the value of a college degree, it’s important tease out the exact benefits that you’d get out a college experience, especially because many of them impact your digital presence.
1. The Network
Your real life social networks are largely tied to the institutions at which you’ve spent time: high school, college, graduate school, the companies at which you’ve worked, church, sports teams, etc. As you move forward in your career, these networks play a large role in securing jobs. That’s because managers often hire within their extended networks.
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One major benefit of college is the ready-made network you will have upon graduation.
2. Direct Professional Development
If you major in a subject that is directly applicable to the job you will have upon graduation (e.g. software engineering), then a large part of the educational experience in college will be valuable for your career. More importantly, college is a great time to do internships. Not only are internships a great way to get direct professional development, but they extend your network as well.
3. Personal Development
For many students, college is a valuable time to build independence and grow as individuals. In addition, taking classes that don’t have a direct and immediate professional benefit -- such as history or literature, for instance -- can build a student’s creativity, critical thinking and problem solving skills. Steve Jobs, a college dropout, said a calligraphy class he took at Reed College was the inspiration for the typography in the first Macintosh.
4. Brand
A degree on your resume from a reputable higher education institution is still an extremely important signal that leads to gainful employment. Whether we like it or not, this brand allows companies to quickly filter through candidates.
So the key question is: Are there other ways to get all of these benefits, or is college still the way to go? Simply put, college is the best path for the vast majority of people right now.
The estimated lifetime earnings for college graduates are $1.6 million more than that of high school graduates, according to the Department of Education. Furthermore, the Bureau of Labor Statistics records show that college graduates have an unemployment rate half that of people who have only a high school diploma.
Even Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and venture capitalist, who is giving $100,000 to students who don't go to college, earned an undergraduate and graduate degree from Stanford. Furthermore, he said that if he were to do it again, he would go to college because he didn’t have specific career goals.
Yet, a college degree should not automatically be interpreted as easy access to a good-paying job. Once in college, you must focus on getting the most value from the college experience by focusing on academics, taking leadership roles in extracurricular activities, and securing internships.
The college experience is ripe with a unique set of opportunities that most people can’t get anywhere else. Once there, it’s up to you to either take advantage of them or let them pass you by.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, jbrizendine
This story originally published on Mashable here.
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