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Should You Even Go To College?

**This content is excerpted from the Guerilla Manual for Adult College Students. To learn more about the book or author visit AdultStudents.com .

"I had wondered what it would be like to have a college degree but I hadn't really found a need for it. But the world has changed."
Patrick A., 46, married and the father of two small kids, finished his Bachelor's in five years while still working a part time job.

Asking if you should even go to college may seem a strange way to begin this book.
But it is a valid starting point. No matter how you do it - and there are any number of ways to earn college credit - getting a Bachelor's degree part time is not an easy chore. It is going to cost you many thousands of dollars and years of your life. And although earning a degree has many positive benefits, going to college also has the potential to cause you a great deal of aggravation. View it as an investment: there is both risk and reward. Ask the same kind of questions you'd ask if you were going to buy a house.

Many people neither need nor want a house. Or, for that matter, a college education. They realize it, and decide to do something else with their time and money.

Many more need a house or a degree, but don't really want it. They understand that it is going to cost them a lot of time and money, but their situation is such that they really just can't do without it. So they go ahead with the project, bite the bullet, and just do it, sacrificing other things.

The third category is the people who want a degree (or a house), but don't really need it. It's more a matter of personal pride than anything else. Under this set of circumstances it becomes purely a private choice - there is no outside pressure from an employment or social standpoint that forces a person into college.

And finally, there are those who both want and need a degree.

Let's examine these categories. If you are reading this book you are in one of them. Determining which one you are in will help you answer the question that starts this chapter: Should you even go to college?

Some people need a degree but don't want it
A lot of people need a degree but don't really want it. More accurately, they don't really want to make the investment in time, money and energy required to get the degree. If degrees were free, these folks would probably take the diploma if it came in the mail. But if it didn't show up they wouldn't much care.

Most of the people in this category are working for some corporation that places a high value on a college degree and the formal, structured education that goes with it. If you don't have the piece of paper you aren't considered qualified to do certain jobs or fill certain positions...and earn the salaries that go with those jobs. End of discussion. Actual performance and innate talent don't have much to do with it.

I once worked with an electronics technician who had originally been trained in the military. He could only be described as brilliant. He had an obvious and awesome talent for electronic circuit design. And he was a much better circuit designer than almost all of the degreed electronics engineers in the department. Everybody knew it. But this guy had no chance of ever being promoted to (and being paid to be) a design engineer, simply because he didn't meet the hiring criteria for that position: a BS degree in electronic engineering.

If this sounds like your situation, you have several choices. You can find another company to work for that places more emphasis on performance and less on pieces of paper, or you can prepare yourself to go nowhere in your career at your current company.

Or you can get your degree.
Those are your choices.

Some people want a degree but don't need one
There are also a lot of people who want a degree but don't really need it. Almost everyone who's self-employed or who runs his or her own business is in this category. Most skilled tradespeople fit here too. Ditto for the creative types who are already making a living as a writer, artist, musician, etc. While the information and learning that goes with earning a degree might be interesting to them, lack of a degree has no material effect on their ability to make a living, and no one is ever going to demand that they have one. So earning a Bachelor's degree is strictly a matter of personal choice. Many of these people actually do get degrees eventually. But they decide to go to college only as a matter of personal pride.

"I was divorced in 1991 and stayed home for a few years with the children. When my youngest was in kindergarten, I thought I would go back to the workforce and found out that the workforce was not ready for me. (So) I decided that I really needed to finish college so that I could support the children, regardless of child support."
Karen D., 46 and the single mother of four, started school in 1972. She earned a Bachelor's degree in May of 1998 and went on for her Master's.

If you want and need a degree
And finally, there are those who both want and need a degree. These folks are probably working for the same companies as the people in the second category, except that they have decided that they are going to stay with that company and therefore have to have that piece of paper to move forward in their careers. Or, realizing that the days of lifetime employment with any employer are probably over, they decide to get a degree to enhance their employment and survival skills in the job market.

Should you get a degree?
Only you can answer that question. And it's a question that you need to truthfully answer to yourself before you decide to get that piece of paper.

But understand right up front that this college project is going to absorb staggering amounts of time, will disrupt your life as you currently know it, will probably take you years to complete, and may cost a ton of money.

Some of it - most of it, probably - will be great fun and very interesting. And the further you get into the process, the more you are likely to find it thoroughly rewarding. You'll meet a lot of very nice people and learn an enormous number of things....some of which you might even remember after the grade card comes in the mail. And your opinion of yourself will increase enormously.

But make no mistake: It ain't gonna be easy, it ain't gonna be quick, and it ain't gonna be cheap. This book will help you make it easier and quicker, and perhaps a bit less expensive. But even under ideal conditions you will wind up doing a lot of work.

It is a hell of a project.

But it can be done. And that is the main point of this entire book: it can be done. And it can be done by you.

"In the back of my mind was always that desire that someday I was going to get my college education because I deserved it."
Kathleen C, 56 and a grandmother, started college in 1971 and it took her 22 years to earn her Associate's Degree. She finished her Bachelor's Degree in May 1998.

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