College Essay: Is College Worth The Cost?

Is College Worth the Cost?

The American Dream. The ideal that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative. This ideology that anybody, regardless of race, gender, or social status, is able to work up the ladder and achieve success. However, the process to receive and live in this prosperity in today’s world has been greatly flawed. A key element to having a true chance of the American Dream is getting an education that goes beyond a high school degree. Yet, even this seemingly simple step in the process is difficult to achieve for many for countless reasons, however, college tuition is the prime cause for this setback. Even though there are people who believe that a college admission is fair to all, I firmly disagree, as countless people cannot pay for higher education, and, therefore, are not given an equal chance to live a moment of the American Dream.

The value of college has drastically changed over the course of a century. In the early history of the United States, going to college was a rare phenomena. The first American college, Harvard, was founded in 1636 with the intention of

Not everyone has to have a diploma to prosper. And you would be right; Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Stacey Ferreira are just a few of the many successful people without a college degree. Consider this, the top 1 percent of wage earners in the U.S. earn almost $500,000 per year. The odds of anyone making it to the top are low, even with a college degree, but the odds are better than those with no college education. Of those with college degrees, roughly eight in 1,000 make it into the upper field of income earners. For those without a college degree, the odds drop as low as three out of 1,000. While that may seem unrealistic, on average people with a bachelor’s degree or higher earn about $20,000 more a year than those without a