Does a College Degree really Pay off
Does a college degree pay off? I believe that it does.
Yes, it's quite possible that you may get a huge student loan, with interest, to pay off over a long period of time. Yes, it is possible that you will have no career prospects when you first leave college. Yes, this situation happens to a lot of college graduates. Is it like a casino, where you spend your money and spin a wheel and hope that you win big? I'm not really sure that the two things can be compared.
See, I used to work in a casino. I worked there for two years. I was desperate to get a job straight out of college (where incidentally, I earned a BFA in Painting and Illustration). I got hired on the boat. I wasn't a dealer or a manager or anything like that. I was a deckhand. Yep. I tied up the boat and swabbed the deck. I was the guy at the boat who you didn't see, who did some of the manual labor behind the scenes. It was very likely that I was the only deckhand, or as far as I knew, only person in the marine department with an advanced degree of any kind (short of captains and mates perhaps). I take that back. I knew one bosun who told me he, "had an associates degree in business." Apparently he was putting that degree to good use as well as I was.
I should probably state that I am not a gambler; at least as far as casino gambling is concerned. I think that casinos are seedy, smoky, noisy environments that attract some of the most desperate and in my most humble opinion, most despicable kind of people. After working on a casino boat, I am convinced that gambling is an addiction just like drugs, cigarettes, or caffeine. I always thought slot machines were almost like throwing dollars into the toilet and flushing, for all the money you might actually win back.
Anyway, that casino job was only ever supposed to be a "temporary" job until I "got the job that I really wanted". I had earned that big college degree in art after all. I should get a job as an illustrator or comic book artist. that's what I had dreamed of doing since I was old enough to pick up a pencil. Instead, I spent two years swabbing decks, getting the captain coffee, and taking out other people's garbage in between cruises. It was a very humbling experience; one that I wrote a pretty detailed diary about, which may one day become a published book if I have my way.
Did my college degree pay off? Eventually. See I never gave up on getting a job in my field. I continually sent out resumes. I went to interviews. Sure I got some rejection letters, but I wasn't about to give up on my dream that I had had since childhood. I decided that I would try to pursue "art" from another angle. I went back to my local community college and studied Graphic Design software. I bought a computer.
Eventually, I did get hired at an in-house Graphic Design department for a large computer company. Did my degree help me to get to that point? Most assuredly. I doubt very seriously that they would have hired me without a four year degree. As I had no previous professional experience as a graphic designer, they were taking a chance on me as it was. I was employed at that company for nearly seven years after that.
When my computer company got bought out about five or six years back, I made a decision to go back to school and get a master's degree. I am currently teaching Graphic Design and Digital Imaging at the community college where I received my associates degree fifteen or so year's prior. Without a master's degree, they never would have even considered hiring me as a teacher, experienced professional or not.
So, do I believe that a college degree pays off? Yes. It may not pay off right away, and it is certainly only the first step in a journey. In my personal experience, those pieces of paper were just as important as everything else to get me where I needed to go. Perhaps it will be the same for you.
