Should Everyone Go To College Analysis

In Stephanie Owen and Isabel Sawhill’s article, Should Everyone Go to College, published in Washington at the Center on Children and Families at BROOKINGS, Sawhill, and Owen write about the advantages and disadvantaged for attending college. The article goes into detail about how most studies have stated the importance of a quality education after high school. But they also explained how some things go unnoticed, like the fact that not every college graduate or all college degrees are not equivalent. "For certain schools, majors, occupations, and individuals, a college may not be a smart investment" (Owen & Sawhill, 2013). Although going to college is encouraged, some people do not need a college degree to become successful. Throughout the
However, focusing on college earnings Owens and Sawhill state, “Someone working a STEM job (science, technology, engineering, and math), with only a high school diploma can expect to make more over a lifetime than someone with a bachelor’s degree working in education, community service and arts, sales and office work, health support, blue collar jobs, or personal services” (Owen & Sawhill, 2013). Stephanie Owen and Isabel Sawhill talk a lot about the benefits of having a science, technology, engineering, or mathematics career, but also how beneficial it can be to pursue in a higher education socially and mentally. When reading this article, I had noticed that the authors regularly explained both the pros and the cons in the pursuance of actively attending college. For example, “One way to estimate the value of education is to look at the increase in earnings associated with an additional year of schooling. However, correlation is not causation, and getting at the true causal effect of education on earnings is not so easy. The main problem is one selection: if the smartest, most motivated people are both more likely to go to college and more likely to be
Sawhill and Owen had written, “For example, Career Academies are high schools organized around an occupational or industry focus, and have partnerships with local employers and colleges. They have been shown by gold standard research to increase men’s wages, hours worked, and employment stability after high school, particularly for those at high risk of dropping out” (Owen & Sawhill, 2013, p. 8). This particular piece of information had stood out to me because it strikes me as odd that the research states that men’s wages, working hours, etc. is being increased. The authors also said, "Unfortunately, recent evidence by Caroline Hoxby of Stanford and Christopher Avery of Harvard shows that most high-achieving low-income students never even apply to selective schools that they are qualified to attend and at which they would be eligible for generous financial aid. There is room for policies that do a better job of matching students to schools" (Owen & Sawhill, 2013, p. 6). It is indeed to be true that most students do not even apply to colleges more in their price range. Which is odd because going to college puts most students in debt by the time they graduate, so why not apply to a more financially reasonable university? The question is, should everyone go to college? Is college necessarily for everybody? That is why there are occupations out there such as engineering,