Four years of high school gets you a diploma, but what does four, or more years of college get you? DEBT.

In the U.S. student loans have amounted to more than $1.61 trillion as of January 2nd, 2022. Many of these students go into debt for nothing, as they never need to use their degree because of the abundant amount of jobs available that do not require a college degree.

College is not needed by every student to have a successful life; therefore, schools and adults must acknowledge the need to equally stress careers instead of pressuring students and making them feel obligated to go to college.

Despite popular belief, a college degree is not necessary to be successful or get a good job.

By the last business day of December 2021, there were about 10.93 million job openings in the United States, 36 percent of which do not require a college degree.

Yes, college is a good thing and a degree can be necessary for certain careers, like the medical field, but many students find themselves not ever using that degree after college.

The wide variety of jobs that are available to students after high school should be an encouragement to administration to want to implement more classes to prepare students for those types of jobs, instead of strictly pushing academics after high school.

A few of those jobs that do not require a 4-year college degree include an EMT, a dental hygienist, a commercial air pilot, an auto mechanic, a firefighter, an electrician, a massage therapist, a business owner, and the list goes on.

Not all students are suited for college, yet they feel they have to because they have been told over and over their whole life that college is necessary. So students find themselves going to college just because that’s what everyone is doing but they either end up dropping out or getting a degree and never using it.

The Federal Reserve Bank backs this up with the statistic that “46 percent of recent college graduates were in jobs that don’t even require a college degree.” That is almost HALF of all college students.

Society needs to take a big shift and realize that academics aren’t everything. There are so many other routes for students to take after college where they can be successful and actually enjoy what they do.

So students, despite what your teachers, administrators, counselors, and the adults around you may be saying, college is not a necessity. College does not define you and it does not determine the outcome of your future.