Should High School Students Succeed In College?

Higher education has come a long way, college now provides an answer for excluded groups who face a disadvantage. “Since World War II, U.S. higher education has been engaged in a process of “massification,” that is, expanding to serve students from all walks of life,” (Eckel, King 20) these students include women, middle class, and minorities who need the economic and social change. Now in the twenty-first century college is just a natural progression for high school students.
In this day and age, is going to college important? Throughout high school, students are pressured to continue their academic career by attending a four year college as soon as senior year is over. College might not be the answer for most students, there are many disadvantages
There is a gap between how and what students are taught and what is demanded of them as adults, high school should teach students how to motivate themselves. If the students are not ready for college, then how are they expected to pay for possible guaranteed failure? The result of these not so ready students are the dropping college graduation rates, either from the financial or academic burden. The cost of college alone is a major concern, most students need to depend on financial aid, loans, or working while in school. It does benefit the economy when students attend college, but the loan debt crisis is getting worse every year. The Joint Economic Committee of the Unites States Congress released the executive summary of the report on student loan debt, “Student loan debt has almost doubled in the past five years, increasing from $550 billion in the fourth quarter of 2007 to just under $1 trillion in the first quarter of 2013. Two-thirds of recent graduates have student loans, with an average balance of more than $27,000.” (Klobuchar, 2013) This coupled with the increasing cost of tuition should make any student and parent hesitant. After college students then need to pay off their loans plus the interest that started piling up as soon as they graduated. This is a problem for these students because it blocks them from being able to buy a car, a house, or to start saving for retirement. This burden then forces these recent graduates to take jobs that doesn’t require a college degree to start paying off the