We were told that college would prepare us for the real world, and like pawns of society, we believed it. Suddenly, you’re browsing through retail jobs because your field isn’t hiring, and entry level jobs require ten years of experience, an arm and your firstborn child. As it turns out, college isn’t the perfect gateway to stability like we thought it would.

In high school, college was taught to be a necessity for success. Education works as a chain that prepares you for the next step. Elementary leads to middle school, high school leads to college, and college leads to either more college or a career. Yet, even elementary school doesn’t know how to prepare its students. Government installations such as common core have replaced an interest with learning by only focusing on test scores. School is now a chore. I struggled with AP classes in high school, and was told it would only get harder when I’m actually in college. The opposite ended up being true. AP classes ended up being much harder than actual college classes. To me, college was a breath of fresh air compared to college. But this itself presents a problem because public education does not know how college operates.

College is supposed to help you succeed. Your professors want you to succeed. However, the system does not. College has become more of a cash grab than a learning center. The price of college has increased so much over the past few years that it’s no longer an option for many people who were told that higher learning was the only road for success. You can get loans, but you’ll be paying those for years to come. Yet, if college was free, it would make it harder for students to get accepted, which hurts those coming from lower income areas that cannot support their local schools. If schools accepted the same number, classrooms would get larger and there would be less of a focus on the individual student. What I don’t understand is how people my age are the ones blamed for the price increase. We didn’t set the prices, yet we have to pay the bill.

If you make it to college, you’re forced to take around 30 credit hours of classes not related to your major. I had to take a Critical Thinking class, and it was the most useless class I had ever taken. Yet, the higher number of core requirements, the more money the institution makes. When we finally get to take the classes we signed up for, we have that experience alone to add to our resume, and that is the main problem with college. It doesn’t provide any experience. We know how to take the tests and apply the theory, but beyond campus, it’s a foreign world. Even internships require experience that is usually learned on your own outside a classroom. For many majors, there isn’t a transition between education and the workforce. Once you get your degree, you must send out your resume and wait. But without the work experience, you won’t get far.

The first thing society needs to learn is that college isn’t the only pathway to success. If you don’t have the means for college, you aren’t a failure. Also, going to an ivy league school doesn’t make you any better than a student at a technical college. Every student has their own goal, and they shouldn’t be regarded higher than another. To the higher ups, you need to figure out where money is important. Why has the price risen so much, and has most of it gone back to benefit students? Also, we need to make learning fun again for the little ones. A first grader shouldn’t be graded based on a number on a test. Bring back creative thinking and encourage kids to learn. Lastly, help the recently graduated. They, and soon to be me, need assurance that once the diploma is in their hands, there is still hope outside a classroom.