Chloe Lew: Don’t underestimate the power of your degree

When I was in elementary school and first discovered the public library, I snuck books under my bed covers and read them in the dim light of a keychain flashlight.

My parents saw this as rebellion against a curfew. Others probably saw it as me being a nerd.

Call it what you may, faith in knowledge has always been part of my crusade toward maturity, just as it is for many students who pursue learning beyond secondary school. It’s why I read, write and adamantly deny that any field of study is a worthless art.

It’s also why I see education as a virtue in itself that should not be diluted by anxieties about financial success.

According to a recent survey conducted by AfterCollege, Inc., a career networking service that helps match students with employers, as of this spring less than 17 percent of current seniors have jobs lined up for after graduation, down three percent from last year. In spite of the fact that 73 percent of seniors are actively searching for jobs, success rates across different fields of study are low, meaning it’s not just starving artists bearing the brunt of a tough economy.

UCLA students fare notably better. Of the 28 percent of seniors who responded to last year’s First Destination Survey conducted by the UCLA Career Center, 38 percent had secured full-time employment for after graduation.

Unsettling as they are, the numbers tell a story we have heard before: The job market in a weak economy is cutthroat. Given the tuition and work we put into our time here, it is easy to feel betrayed by the institutions we thought promised us future financial security.

But if upcoming graduates want to beat the odds, then they cannot afford to feel disillusioned about the worth of their bachelor’s, master’s or doctoral degrees. After all, a degree still brings returns financially. Bachelor degree holders are still set to earn about two-thirds more than high school graduates over a 40-year working life, according to a 2013 College Board report.

And beyond economic security, college is about more than landing employment or even discovering a career path. Looking at college as a one-track race to a lucrative 9-to-5 job dismisses the value of college as a place that’s fundamentally for learning.

After all, education does not just make us quick-witted conversationalists with a tone of self-importance. It helps us become contributing members of society with interests, talents and ambitions that add something ultimately more valuable than a check in our own pockets.

Universities have not always been tailored toward career development the way they are increasingly expected to be today, said Jennifer Lindholm, assistant vice provost in the division of undergraduate education.

We need to take a step back and appreciate school for what it was to start with: education for the sake of education.

After all, learning in college goes far beyond what we take from a textbook. College campuses foster the ultimate environment for learning from people of different cultures and traditions, which is key to personal growth.

In fact, based on senior surveys conducted within UCLA’s College of Letters and Science last spring, graduating seniors feel UCLA leaves as strong an impact on their personal development as it does on academic development. What’s more, in response to an open-ended question about students’ most meaningful learning experience, the most common theme that emerged was personal growth.

Make no mistake, a vast majority of us are aiming for gainful employment, and given the dollars, years and cups of coffee we have poured into higher education institutions, we deserve this much. But the fact is, there will always be odds to beat, and just because the education system suffers when the economy suffers does not mean that education itself is to blame.

Ultimately, appreciating the rewards we reap over our four years here, both academic and personal, is the first step in recognizing our own worth as soon-to-be college graduates. We can wield that confidence to be proactive about what jobs we want, and further, what jobs we have been educated for.

Our degrees matter. Our four years here matter. The clubs we join, the professors who mentor us, the failures we grow from, the worst day during a relentless finals week that later becomes the best night celebrating with friends – all of these things matter.

And most of all, as we graduate armed with our degrees, our attitude about what education means matters.

Make it a good one.

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