By Dominique Franklin / Staff Writer

By Dominique Franklin / Staff Writer

It’s generally accepted that a college degree is better than no degree.

Does that statement still stand true when the quality of education from the colleges and universities in the United States has deteriorated to such a dismal level?

Unfortunately, the education system being on a steady decline is not just a mere opinion.

Statistics provided by an article titled “Student loan debt hell,” on dailymarkets.com offers facts to support that statement:

50 percent of U.S. students in colleges or universities have never taken a class where they had to write more than 20 pages.

Thirty two percent of U.S. students have never taken a class where they had to read more than 40 pages a week.

The most startling statistic is that nearly half of the graduate science students are international students.

Despite the poor U.S. education system, the price of tuition continues to rise sharply. From 1978 to 2010, the cost of tuition in the U.S. has taken an increase of 900 percent.

With such a high jump in the cost of education, a cost that still continues to increase, students must find new ways to pay for the remedial education.

Another statistic shows that in 2010, the average college graduate had accumulated nearly $25,000 in student loan debt.

Such a large number far surpasses the debt college students accumulate from credit cards.

Since college students can expect to at least be able to receive a middle class job, dealing with the high level of debt now would be worth it then, right?

Wrong.

In the past, having a degree was basically an automatic ticket to the middle class.

This is no longer the case.

According to the previously mentioned article, in the U.S., 18,000 parking lot attendants have a college degree, 317,000 waitresses and waiters have a college degree, 365,000 cashiers have a degree, and 24.5 percent of sales people also have a degree.

To add insult to injury, in many cases a college graduate will not even be hired at a part time job.

This is because the company often prefers to hire someone who is more likely to invest more time into the company.

The unemployment rate for college graduates under 25 years old remains at a startling 9.3 percent. Students now have been asking what the point to acquiring a degree is.

Paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for classes that a highly trained person can pass does not set college students up for success in the future.

However, students should be able to share some of the blame.

Though the price of tuition is basically indecent of student opinions, how a class is structured is not.

The majority of college students now spend about four hours in class, and one or two hours studying outside of the classroom.

Giving that much attention to coursework is also not a good set up for the future.

In order to receive an acceptable percentage of passing students, and hold onto an already dwindling amount of jobs as an educator, professors are being pressured to lower the level of difficulty so that their students can pass.

As with everything else in life, there’s more than one side to a story.

It’s a fact that the cost of colleges and universities has skyrocketed.

This puts many people at a disadvantage when it comes to enrolling or finishing school, and places students in a rough position when it comes to obtaining high levels of debt.

Even still, to say that higher education is no longer worth it would be stretching all of the statistics too far.

The article did not mention the advantages of having a degree, which still vastly outnumber the disadvantages.

Measures need to be taken to bring down the cost of education.

Students must also do their part to pass all their classes, and devote more time to studying despite difficulties.

If students were to make this change when it comes to education, then the U.S. will regain respect for its education system.

Professors will be able to hold their students accountable for learning the proper material, and assigning the proper amount of work that comes with being a college student.

If the balance is once again reestablished between jobs, the level of education, and the price of education, then more people will be looking forward to achieving their degree.

If the current trends do continue, then the U.S. college dropout percentage will surely continue to rise.