Is College Worth It In 2022? (Putting An End To The Endless Debate)

First of all let me give you the short answer: That depends...

Now let's continue with the long answer it depends on the person, his/her personality, what they want to do with their life, what kind of lifestyle they want to live, how much they are willing to adapt to the changing conditions, what they are willing to learn, how they want to spend their day to day life and what are his/her long term goals are...

At one point or another, you probably heard both extreme ideas about college which are:

1. College is a total scam and a waste of money

2. Going to college is the only way to a secure job with consistent promotions

Although both ideas carry some sort of accuracy and I think the college system is mostly broken all around the world but there are also some universities that will solely thrive because of their brand credibility (their track record of success) and adaptation to the new realities of the world. I believe the answer to the question of whether or not "Is College Worth It?" is a subjective question which means every individual will get a different answer for themselves.

As someone who studied in college for 6.5 years (it was a difficult school and I made a lot of mistakes on the way) I think I have a pretty good understanding of the college environment and let's discuss two things:

If you are not going to at least a top 20% school in your country you are wasting your money there because college all around the world is getting more expensive and expensive while the ROI of it is decreasing more and more, mainly because of the maturity of the internet and you can find almost any information by asking Uncle Google.

Because let me give you the honest review of what I studied in Business Administration 70% of the course material can be found on Google with ease and detailed enough explanations but I also believe that the rest of 30% is really valuable and provides a vision and business understanding that enables strategizing on a level that is not possible when you are not in that environment. Considering I graduated from a college in my country that always ends up in every top 10 university list in my country (I graduated from Bilkent University you can look it up) there are also more valuable lessons a top college curriculum can teach with the level of effort and consistency the course and workload requires... There are also more valuable lessons they teach with the level of effort and consistency the course and workload requires...

In that context some of most valuable and lifelong lessons I learned were:

-Maintaining high performance and calm nerves under the pressure of tight deadlines (an extremely valuable business skill that is not talked about enough besides mental health)

-Learning to deal with all kinds (lazy, free riders, wannabe leaders and entrepreneurs, extroverted, introverted, socially awkward, shy, creative types and hardworking so on and so on) of people in group projects that you can also come across in a business project easily since groups are mostly assigned randomly

-Learning how to deal with mental health issues largely by yourself (exercise is your biggest antidepressant here)

-Spending extensive amounts of time by yourself and reducing the damage the brain takes from loneliness

-Importance of volunteering and contributing to the community (With so many different ways I never imagined activities such as building statues with clay actually can make a difference)

-How to deal with lots of failures that comes over and over again at all areas of life (get back up and try again is the way but it is easier said than done the advice is simple but practicing it is really difficult)

Most importantly it showed my weaknesses very clearly and since we are talking about weaknesses let's talk about my biggest one:

Meeting new people and maintaining good relationships

If you are not a very sociable person, you struggle with meeting new people and you don't have good social skills you are going to have a frustrating time in this environment because while everybody seems to enjoy themselves and become friends easily you will struggle with even talking to one person or becoming part of a group.

Fixing this issue will take a long time and college will mostly suck since you also know by meeting new people you can improve or get help for so many different areas of your life BUT YOU BASICALLY CAN'T... Also knowing and becoming friends with a lot of people who have different career paths enables you to handle problems that require dealing with extensive legal procedures more easily and quickly it also can also bring business opportunities you would otherwise never imagined. In addition to that you can miss out on some fun experiences during your time in college. Unfortunately if you are not capable of developing friendships you won't be able to have any of this... If you stop wondering what could have happened, get over FOMO and accept reality for what it is, learn about your biases, understand your mistakes and start doing what you can instead of judging yourself based on what could have happened (which is the worst use of your time and energy anyway) your time will be much more well spent in college.

So a good question to ask yourself before attending to college is do I have good social skills, if I don't have that am I willing to improve my situation (how quickly can I improve it) and will I be able to get over FOMO if I can't?

While determining whether or not attending college is a good idea you need to understand another thing:

College is an environment that you need to make it work for you... It is not automatically you enter and you start reaping the benefits of the environment right away(although it has some benefits like that I don't think they are worth the money). 30 years ago when you graduated from college you had a really good chance of actually landing a job if you were an honor or high honor student jobs were mostly offered to you so it made sense to go to college but now things are a lot more complicated.

During your time at university if you want to maximize the ROI you get you need to study hard and get good grades, attend a lot of student clubs, take different elective classes that can teach different skills, volunteer in different charity projects, become active on Linkedin, attend lots of career fairs, spend time with successful graduates meet and become friends with a lot of people.

Today to even get noticed by big companies you need to fill your CV with a lot of extra curriculum activities (student clubs, volunteering, etc.), a second or even third language, different skills, and interests. Also, the content of the CV should be compatible with the culture, values, and requirements of the job description of companies you are planning to work for... So probably preparing multiple contextual CVs for different job positions would be one of the best advice for people who are planning to enter into the corporate world.

For me, college was not worth it. I wasted far too much money and time over there if you can learn from my mistakes and graduate within a reasonable time range I think it can be worth it for you especially if you are not going to be an entrepreneur and make the college environment work for you in the best of your ability.

But there is one more important question before I tell you about my mistakes:

If you are going to a private university who is paying for it?

-If your parents are paying graduating within a reasonable time frame is especially important since they probably worked hard and saved up that money despite a lot of difficulties. Also when you did not graduate within that reasonable time frame if you are a somewhat responsible individual you feel a lot of shame and regret because of the disappointment you feel towards yourself.

-If you are taking a loan to pay for it, be careful with the interest unless you will be able to land a job that gets you consistent promotions, salary increases or you build other income streams paying that debt will be a pain in the butt.

-If you are getting a scholarship research the requirements of the scholarship really well in terms of how much time you have to graduate, is there a certain CGPA criteria you need to maintain to keep the scholarship, what is the minimum course load you need to take in order to keep the scholarship at a given semester? etc.

So if I ever got the chance to go back to being an 18 year old who is about to become a freshman in college what would I do differently?

-As I take the first step into the university I would try to meet people more frequently even though I had terrible social anxiety at the time instead of hanging out by myself all the time

-I would stay away from "career clubs" who just include a bunch of jerks who only care about stepping on one another's shoulders to become the next board member or president of the club but act like they are friends

-When I passed the English Prep School and started attending courses in the Business Administration faculty I would follow the content of courses extensively and listened to the instructors more carefully especially in my first and second year while devoting more time to studying.

-I would start volunteering much more early and became a part of more different projects

-I would eat more healthy instead of chowing down junk food which made my depression even worse

-I would start doing yoga earlier (yoga is great for stress and anxiety management)

-I would never attend parties (that's my decision yours can be different)

-I would try to adopt more and different hobbies (such as fencing, parachuting, scuba diving)

-I would start creating content for the internet much sooner

-I would study harder instead of procrastinating, trying to get motivated and blaming myself

-I would start to experiment with different business models that do not require that much upfront capital much sooner

So I hope if you are a freshman at a top university this provided you a guideline of what you actually need to focus on through my experiences and regrets since life is too short to learn just from your own mistakes.

As you see I tried my best to keep this post under the general title of college regardless of department or profession. However all and all the most important aspect you need to focus on when going to college is actually studying a major that will lead to a career that you will actually enjoy because if we put aside sleep, nutrition, exercise, socializing and hobbies (if you can make the time for them) we basically live to work... Considering the amount of time you will spend at work doing something you hate is an extremely bad idea since you can lose the joy and positive energy you have towards life (I have seen this happen so many times around me) and I know our school system does a terrible job at identifying which job or career path is suitable for us or which one we would at least not hate... I never know what I wanted to do when I was a kid and I genuinely don't understand people who always wanted to be a doctor/astronaut etc. without ever working a day on that given profession. If you are like me one of my main suggestions would be studying a general department like Business Administration and doing lots of internships in different fields (eg. human resources, accounting, marketing, sales etc.) before deciding on a field or or you can choose not to go to college which in many cases is a smart idea. However in order to work in certain professions college degree is a requirement with very little room to exceptions some examples include:

-Medicine (Nurse, Doctor, Pharmacist etc.)

-Any Form Of Engineering

-Law

-Architecture

-Archeology

-Any Form Of Teaching or Academic Career

Another major tip that I have for that is observing different people who have different careers and asking yourself a couple of questions:

-What is this person doing on a day-to-day basis? Which parts of their career do they enjoy the most? (If it is only the money part while hating everything else their priorities are broken especially if they are not thinking about early retirement with significant amounts of wealth)

-What are the stress levels they have to tolerate? Would you be willing to tolerate that? Are the stress levels worth the money and opportunities this career path provides? (Think about this question in the context of industry standards and macro economical situation of your country)

-Are there opportunities for promotions and growth? If there is not are you OK with doing the same job and tasks for the same amount of money for a long time? What are some of the sacrifices you need to make to deserve the promotions? (In the corporate world advancing quickly usually depends on working overtime, learning the necessary skills much faster than your peers showing up early and getting off late which means your leisure activities and social life will suffer from this)

-Are my strengths and weaknesses compatible with this job?

-What are the long-term threats this profession can face based on different upcoming changes?

-What is the impact of this job on the society and planet? (If it is polluting the environment or make people spend money on a product/service that is harmful to their health maybe you can rethink your decision)

I know that there are people out there who have extremely fulfilling careers and what they do has nothing to do with what they studied in college. If you are able to quickly adapt to new environments you can try to do that but I think working in a field you spent 4 years learning theoretical knowledge is a much better idea also there are certain professions that you combine the theoretical knowledge with practical applications of the theory ( eg. medical school, archeology) so you have to go to college to make this your actual career. Now let's say you read all these and you decided that college is too expensive and you don't want to make the environment work for you (to be honest sometimes trying to keep up with every event, constantly preparing projects and homeworks for endless deadlines and sometimes failing at exams you studied hard kinda sucks)

Are you out of options if you don't want to go to college? NOT AT ALL

You have plenty of options I will cover them in the next post until then

Take Care

Have A Great Day