Argumentative Essay: Is College Worth It?

Every student struggles with the decision to go to college or not. For the average family, their dream is for their child to achieve higher education than they’ve had. However, high school students may choose to not attend college at all and to do something else they believe is worthwhile. The value of a college degree has been a controversial debate that still continues to this day. Both authors Leonhardt and Matthews respectively illustrate their contrasting opinions on the topic, with significant logical evidence to support their claims. As each person has a different career in mind or own personal values, the idea of whether attending college is worth the cost is a personal question. However, choosing to take a college education despite

It’s true that many recent college graduates are unsatisfied with the student debt they’ve accumulated or the jobs they are unable to obtain. However, author Leonhardt of “Is College Worth It? Clearly Data Say” remarks back with research from the Economic Policy Institute that demonstrate how the “average student debt is about $25,000” (p. 3) for four-year college and that the “unemployment rate in April [2014] for people between 25 and 34 years old with a bachelor’s degree was a mere 3 percent”(p. 3). As a result, Leonhardt gives significant data to emphasize why students shouldn’t be worried about their financial situation after graduating from a 4 year college. He highlights the significant amount of money students would be losing if they did not attend college by citing a paper by Mr. Autor in the journal of Science, which states that “the true cost of college degree is about negative $500,000” (p. 2). Thus, students who choose not to follow a path of higher education will typically not acquire as much money in their entire lifetime as they could be earning if they had a college degree. Most parents would agree with author Leonhardt because college is the only reliable way to ensure a student is able to get a well-paying

In the article “Why college isn’t for everyone, explained in a single chart” by Matthews, there are noteworthy pieces of evidence to exclaim how the cost of a degree has increased remarkably, while college graduates have been stuck earning the same wages. He reveals that “the bottom quarter of earners with a college degree don’t make more money than the average high school graduate,” (p. 2) which hasn’t changed for the past 40 years. Matthews builds a concrete argument with logical evidence by using statistics from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, while considering other factors of why 25% of college graduates may not be earning as much. He states that some aspects have not been accounted for, such as “how much money this bottom quarter of degree ­holding earners would have made without their college education” (p. 3) or career choice as “there are many jobs that require a degree but don’t pay very well” (p. 3). With this in mind, Leonhardt’s argument still stands for why college education overrules as the best decision because the majority of students are given crucial advantages high school graduates may never