"The Value of College Degree" written by Katherine Porter

The ideas in the essay, "The Value of College Degree" written by Katherine Porter, make a lot of important points.  The one part where she says, "These statistics support the contention that, though the cost of hight education is sidnificant, given the earnings disparity that exist between those who earn a bachelor's degree and those who do not, the individual rate of return on investment in higher education is sufficiently high to warrent the cost," (Porter, 488) the problem is you end up paying years and years afterward just to pay off your collage degree, after you start earning any income.  The availability of jobs are causing a lot of students not being able to find a job in their field of interest, and end up taking lower paying jobs and struggling to pay of their collage bills, which results in taking it longer to finally get the income that they went to school for.  Where as if they start right out with a low paying job to begin with, and work straight through all those years, without going to collage, there income has increased through the years with raises, etc, and seniority in the working place.  More than likely they probably at this time built up a considerable amount of retirement savings.

  Also in the essay it says "there is a tendency for more highly educated women to spend more time with their children for the future," (Porter, 489) this can be the extreme opposite for quite a few.  These women can become so into their field and making money that their job becomes their number one priority.  It becomes all about making money.  It also becomes all about their kids being extremely educated, and having degrees, and other recreation becomes not as important as education and making money. The familes "value" gets lost.  I have seen this through personal experience, in my Aunt and her family.  She was so into making money, that she traveled out of town for years, while her children were basically on their own.  She would leave town for an entire week just to come home, do her laundry and get ready for her next trip out of town.  There was no one at her home to nuture her children, or be there for them when they were in need.  I remeber my cousin being so scared on her first day of school every year, that she would throw up, and there was no one there to tell her it would be alright.  When her sister, my other cousin, was in high school, she would roam the streets all hours of the night.  There was no one to ask where she was, until her dad came in late at night from doing farming.  I just always felt like there should have been someone there for them.    They all did turn out ok, but it could have been very bad without a parent to guide them.