College is one of greatest financial and chronological investments of a person's lifetime. With their entire future at stake, students work hard to ensure their prosperity as they follow the path of education from an inexperienced adolescent to an independent and career-ready adult. But are the advantages of a higher education worth the immense cost? Despite criticisms of a college education becoming unaffordable or unrewarding, the university experience has proven fruitful in regard to long term finance and the improved sense of self the individual attains throughout their college education. For many Americans, the price of university-level schooling is well over what their family can afford; because of rising tuition costs, even middle-class families view …show more content…
Regardless, the economic success of the majority of college graduates prove that a degree is well worth the financial investment. It is fairly common knowledge that a person’s level of education directly correlates with their salary, and while success can never be guaranteed, recent statistics attest to this belief. For instance, in 2010, the entry level hourly wage of a male college graduate was $21.77 (Source C), a figure over three times the $7.25 minimum wage that many degree-less workers earned, without any ancillary benefits, at the time. In total, the divergence between the salaries of those who did and didn’t graduate from college average to almost $20,000 in 2010 (Source F). Overall, the fiscal and economic advantages of college, including “an inflation-adjusted annual return of more than 15 percent”, are too momentous to overlook (Source D). Whilst quite a few people argue that a higher education isn’t worth the