Pursuing College Investment

In order to answer my main research question if pursuing higher education and earning a college degree is a good investment, I organized my paper with the focus on three independent issues: how college quality, college tuition and increasing student debt contribute to college enrollment and impact a student’s future career. I then developed three hypotheses of which I referred to past scholarly articles as resources to help support each hypothesis. The first hypothesis argued that college tuition has little to no affect on the financial success of a student after earning his or her degree. Instead, the student’s final degree and/or the prestige of the university would have a greater impact on the graduates’ future career than the college tuition …show more content…
I found Burdman’s conclusion to be of interest when she presents the student debt dilemma. As a reminder, the student debt dilemma occurs when students are stuck between making the decision if they should pursue college and invest in loans or reconsider attending college and pursuing a college degree altogether (Burdman, 2005: 2). The rising numbers of both tuition and student debt causes students to question if a college degree is worth pursuing. Like the second hypothesis, the third may be supported if only discussing students from a low economic background. It was noticeably clear that such a topic could not be further investigated without addressing class status. Thus it proved difficult to acknowledge whether or not by hypothesis could become valid arguments or …show more content…
Of course there are an additional number of factors that would have changed the research performed in the past if studied only slightly different than that of its original experience. For example Cao (2007) and Johnstone (2003) certainly remind readers that college attendance affects not only the student but also those who may also be contributing to the college’s tuition. This introduces a possible new topic that if a student’s parents are paying for their child’s education, what will the parent’s return of investment be? The parent’s will not be receiving the education nor will they be applying for a job upon their student’s graduation. And if their child happens to not receive or pursue a career once receiving their degree, would that be considered a failed investment for the parents? These too are thought-provoking questions that could be explored in an entirely separate