In his article "Will Dropouts Save America?", Michael Ellsberg states that a college degree is frivolous in this economy and is unnecessary for success in life. While I agree with him on some of the smaller details of his article, our opinions probably couldn't be much more different. While I believe that some people are born with a natural talent and don't need college to be successful, I don't believe that college is a thing of the past or useless as Ellsberg makes it out to be. Ellsberg scoffs at our educational system trying to prepare us to have good resumé, saying that "80 percent get filled in the informal job market" as opposed to a supposed 20 percent, resumé-based job market (Ellsberg). What he is proposing is that instead of everybody trying to go to college, everybody should try to be entrepreneurs. While I agree that we do need more entrepreneurs, I do not believe that entrepreneurship is something to be focussed upon in schools. Not everybody should run their own business, as it is a risky financial venture which has an almost guaranteed chance to fail.
In addition to business-ownership being a risky business, there are only a certain amount of people that can have businesses at once. It's hard enough to become a business owner nowadays with the cost and competition, but could you imagine is the educational system groomed everybody to be owners of businesses instead of workers in business? There would be "too many chiefs and not enough indians" as the old saying goes. Too many people would be trying to do the same thing where the work is not needed.
In closing, do I believe that college is worth it? Absolutely. College is an institution that was created to further the education of a high school graduate so that he or she may be better prepared to enter the working world without (or at least with less) fear of working in modern society, or even being hired. I believe that college works as well today as it did back when Ellsberg said that the college mentality started, "in the stable economy of the 1950s" (Ellsberg).
