The value of a (GVSU) education

Well, I won’t say things are slow at the moment. Last week was a day shorter than a usual school week, and it was still about as busy as could be. Which was kind of funny, since we didn’t have very many high school seniors visiting the campus, being the first week of high school for most of Michigan. I suppose that’s a sign that I just had a lot of class work right away (not that I’m complaining; I’d rather be active than bored). And we finished it off some athletic achievement, so there’s a plus.

Speaking of last week, someone on campus happened to talk to me about the merit of college on Thursday, and whether or not higher education was worth the cost. So is it really worth taking on heavy student loans to attend a college or university?

Yes. Easily. Everyone talks about how college grads will make more money over the course of their lifetime than high school grads, but instead of just writing that here and calling it good, I wanted some hard numbers. According to a 2002 report by the US Census Bureau, over the course of an (average) adult working life, a high school grad will earn about $1.2 million, an associate’s degree holder will earn $1.6 million, and a bachelor’s degree holder will earn about $2.1 million (again, these are all averages).

Of course these are just strictly economic benefits, and there’s a lot more to college than economy. I’m a far more critical thinker now than I would have been without a college education, and I definitely feel as though I’m a socially, politically, and culturally more aware person for my time spent at GVSU. That’s not counting the number of friends that I’ve made here or the connections that I’ve made with faculty who also work in their respective fields of study. And I don’t mention the experienced faculty just to say “look at how professional the professors are,” but to point out a general advantage of education in the first place. College is a location where students can gather and learn from others rather than from trial or error, making them far more prepared for the world ahead of them regardless of the path that they may choose. College is an investment, one where a student spends time, effort, and money in an institution which will allow them to enter into their professional lives at a higher level or perhaps even enter into a higher profession than if they had chosen not to attend.

In my opinion, Grand Valley presents this service of education in a far more extensive variation. I can’t speak to other universities, and whether or not they offer this same value, but with GVSU I feel as though this idea of education extends far beyond my professional life and into all facets of who I am. Yes, I will be professionally more able upon graduation, but I will also end up leaving this institution with an advanced understanding of myself; my social, emotional, cultural, political, and ideological values and the ways in which those interact with the world around me. If time spent at Grand Valley can be marked by one word, it would probably be “growth.”

Does that mean that it comes without a price? No. You still have to pay for college, and you still have to work pretty darn hard after you’ve paid for it, but in the end your education will pay you back beyond that which you’ve put in.

But I’ve already taken way longer to explain a topic that I could have just finished with “yes, trust me,” so I think that’s my cue to sign off.

-Kyle