College Education is More Than Just a Job Training in the Future

While job training in college provides realistic choices for well-paying careers, there is far greater importance to a college education than just earning a living in the field of study. College is a life experience that transcends education and good grades. College is also a time in which young people can learn more about themselves and the world they live in. In summary, college learning in future years should not be job training. I entirely disagree with Harvey Bump's statement that college learning in 2015 should be job training.

Before delving to deeply into this idea, perhaps it is necessary to reiterate that college education exists for use by all people, regardless of their long-term intentions. Many people go to college for many different reasons. For example, a number of people pursue a college education not only so that they can to develop their futures, but also because they may quite simply be interested in the in-depth study of a specific field of interest. An analysis of the general groups of people within the student-body gives further insight to this concept.

When analyzing the student body of a particular university, an important group of people go overlooked. These would be the students who go to college simply because they wish to educate themselves, and not necessarily to secure their futures. Most of the time, these people are older than the average students. From an outside perspective, it is easy to assume that these people must be wealthy to have the luxury of going to college simply for education. These are but misguided judgements. Hypothetically, if all college learning were to be job training, these particular groups of eager learners would have little to no purpose for being in the college classroom at all.

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Another interesting idea is that generally, people who pursue things that interest them often end up being more successful. Even before finding a sustainable career, many students who go to college to pursue their interests often find themselves with higher GPAs than the average student who is only interested in studying something that will one day earn them a living. As Zac Bissonnette states in his article, studying something that interests you is one of the most important, and most obvious necessities when in the college learning environment (Bissonnette 2010).

This concept can also be applied to people in the workforce after college. For example, imagine an individual with a job that they enjoy. versus another person who dreads every day that they have to show up to work. The individual who finds some level of enjoyment and interest in what they are doing would be more motivated to give the work their best effort. Plus, nobody wants to be stuck in a lifetime career that they absolutely hate, even if you are making decent money. Personally, I would gladly risk a high paying job that I hate for one with lesser pay that I enjoy.

As for the great number of students hoping to make a lot of money at some point in their future careers, many of them unfortunately come up short in today's economy with no job at all. The economy of the US at the present time makes it nearly ten times more difficult to find careers than it was fifty years ago. There was an ancient time in US history where people could find sufficient jobs with a High School Diploma. Clearly, the era of easy-to-get jobs has ended. To go even further, a four year college degree is often not enough to secure a decent career. With the economy in the state that it is currently in, job training would provide little to no careers for students fresh out of college.

Why not then, continue to allow people to study their interests. In fact, history has shown that people can run businesses with a degree in liberal arts. In his article, O'Shaughnessy illustrates that liberal arts degrees provide education that is more useful in post-college careers any education for a business degree would. Among these skills are communication skills,analytic skills, as well as teamwork skills, and none of which are usually provided in business education (O'Shaughnessy 2011). As O'Shaughnessy states, students will learn much more from studying something that interests them, or that they are passionate about. Unless, of course, some students are passionate about business, which I would assume is quite uncommon.

Another issue that I have with job training is that it does not educate students outside of what they must know about their chosen career path. The question then becomes how much are students learning about new ideas and the world around them? Nowadays, college allows for students to entertain critical thinking and intellectual thought, as well as allowing them to shape their own beliefs about the world and society.

Currently, one of the most common goals for students to achieve from a four year education is to earn a business degree. As stated in Lynn O'Shaughnessy's article, many people spend countless hours and hard work to get their business degree only to find that they haven't learned much useful information at all (O'Shaughnessy 2011). Such would be the case if job training became the primary part of students' college educations.

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