Reaping the Benefits of a College Education

Hannah McCain — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 14:15:04 +0000

The first time I ever saw a policeman beating someone was two years ago. I was in Morocco, drinking coffee at a café, and for an hour or so a protest had been building momentum on the street facing me. There were masses of men and women, all of them grouped in blocs according to the color of their matching vests – some blue, some red, some yellow – and all chanting and cheering as they strode back and forth along the broad avenue in front of the Parliament building. These marches are a common occurrence in Morocco’s capital city, so, while I had only been in Morocco for two weeks, this was the third march like this that I had so far seen. This one was bigger and better-organized than the previous ones, however, and I would venture a guess and say that explains why this one in particular did not end as peacefully as the others had. It ended instead with blue- and red- and yellow-vested protesters spraying in all directions like a twisted Jackson Pollock. The riot police had lost their cool – perhaps deservedly, probably not – and charged at the protesters, armored and wielding heavy batons. Protesters ran through the café where I was sitting, some whooping jubilantly, others looking scared. Over the next ten minutes the protesters regrouped several times under the auspices of their fearless leaders and groups of them would charge at the Parliament building and its baton-wielding guard. The guard, of course, charged back (but with batons). This was where the beating occurred. Naive Hannah, having grown up amidst the pine trees and gentle neighborhoods of Maine, was shocked. I couldn’t imagine what these protesters could be marching for that garnered such ire from the Parliament’s guard. However, as it turned out, I wasn’t witnessing the protests of some sort of group of fringe radicals. These masses of well-organized, brightly colored protesters were college graduates – all of them. One color vest signified those who were not only graduates of college, but of medical school. And these college graduates were marching because they were all unemployed. Morocco’s unemployment was at its lowest in years when it fell to 7.7% in 2007, but it’s currently back up to around 10%. This isn’t taking into consideration the underemployment that Morocco’s lower class resorts to in order to survive. Seventy-year-old men are out on the streets selling roasted peanuts or single cigarettes, jobs they have fed their families with their whole lives, jobs they probably began before they were old enough to have families. University graduates in Morocco, like in the United States, are not attracted to the idea of accepting a job or a lot in life lower than what they have worked towards, so unemployment is often felt even more strongly – if that is possible – among college graduates than among other groups of young Moroccans. In the United States, the prospects facing college graduates are not so grim, even in the face of our country’s recession. In a report entitled “Education Pays,” the College Board shows a bold graph that depicts the earning discrepancies between Americans of different educational levels. Unsurprisingly, Americans with a bachelor’s degree earn more than those with just a high school diploma. The average “full-time year-round worker” with a bachelor’s degree earning 62% more than he with only a high school diploma. Along with higher salaries, college graduates in the United States face statistically lower levels of unemployment than their less-educated counterparts, and they tend to live longer, thanks to increased “health literacy,” a better likelihood of making informed healthy living choices, and access to better health care due to their higher salaries. Even as the price tag for college is ballooning and our economy is suffering through a recession, a college education continues to be seen as the key to success in the United States, and that perception is not without reason. Even in this time of recession in the United States, and even though the American dream, yeah, is pretty much a lot of bullshit, in the United States we have the security of knowing that more often than not we will reap what we sow, and college will have been worth it. For other youth, in Morocco or otherwise, not even a college education can guarantee any measure of security.

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Reaping the Benefits of a College Education