Many American Students face the greater threats of college debt throughout their lifetime. America has created standards for students to receive a college degree, in order for students to make an adequate amount of money in the future to pay off their debt and create a future. Students spend thousands of dollars to receive an education and end up borrowing money from banks, ending them into a reoccurring cycle of debt, making a college degree not worth the value America says it has.
Receiving a degree is meant to give students an opportunity to build their future and provide life skills to a student, but how can students create a future if college debt prevents them from reaching their goal? In the Political cartoon to the left, a college graduate is chained to a hand that states “Lender”, this image emphasizes that the average college graduate is chained in student loans, preventing the student from freedom due to the reoccurring cycle of debt that is accumulated over their college career, making it difficult to escape, creating a stressful and burdensome process for American College Students.
I believe that a college student work twice as harder to recover from the debt than an individual who is on the path to their career. The amount of money that is spent going to college can be used for bills and personal expenses instead of a paper that will only get you so far in life. The amount of time and energy it takes to get out of debt and start the path to life is rigorous and life wasting. My beliefs on a college degree is that it is seen as a worthy piece of document that make an individual stand different from another individual in our society. Receiving a degree shows how determined an individual is and how high you’re ranked in society. While some people might agree or disagree with me, the amount of money spent can either make or break an individual.
Working can provide the same amount skill set and material as college does, benefitting an individual in the future. In the article, “Blue-Collar Brilliance”, Mike Rose explains throughout his text that his mother didn’t receive a college degree but had enough skills and experience from working at a restaurant. Mike would remember his mother running from table to table, placing orders and memorizing them. Rose states that he has come to “Understand how much his mother kind of work demands of both body and brain” (245). Growing up, he saw the amount of skills and work his mother put into waitressing at a restaurant without a college degree and saw how intelligence doesn’t come from a diploma.
Rose uses small stories of his family throughout his text to show how gaining skills and experience doesn’t always come from a higher education, but instead can develop over years of working. In the text, rose states, “we reinforce this notion by defining intelligence solely on grades in school and numbers on IQ tests.” (250). Through this, rose uses this to show how society primarily views an individual’s skills and performance from standardized testing and IQ testing. Rose uses this to explain how society pairs an individual intelligence to a test, when we shouldn’t go based of testing. Roses his mother story to show how his mother didn’t need a higher education to do perform well on her job.
College debt has created a hole in our society, making it difficult for an individual to gain freedom and liberty. Many students struggle with this everyday due to reoccurring debt, and it creates a burden on these students. College degrees will only get an individual so far, and it makes an individual work twice as hard to pay off their debt and began their futures.
