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What’s the Value of Higher Education?

Have political and fiscal debates about higher education lost sight of the value of education for individuals and society? Dr. Johnnetta Cole discusses how universities can inform and inspire.

• Dr. Johnnetta Cole President Emerita, Smithsonian National Museum of African Art; President Emerita, Spelman College and Bennett College

This interview was conducted at the Yale Higher Education Leadership Summit , hosted by Yale SOM’s Chief Executive Leadership Institute on January 30, 2018.

The value of a college degree can be measured in a number of different ways: increased lifetime earnings potential, a network of classmates and fellow alumni, subject-matter expertise, a signal of stick-to-itiveness, potentially a marker of class or the capacity to move across classes. There are also less tangible benefits, like becoming a more well-rounded individual and part of a well-informed public.

Yale Insights recently talked with Dr. Johnnetta Cole about how she measures the value of higher education. Cole is the former president of Spelman College and Bennett College, the only two historically black colleges and universities that are exclusively women’s colleges. After retiring from academia, she served as the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art. In addition, she served on the boards of a number of corporations, including Home Depot, Merck, and Coca-Cola. She was the first African-American chair of the board for the United Way of America.

Q: Why does higher education matter?

I would say that we could get widespread agreement on what I’m going to call the first purpose of higher education: through this amazingly powerful process of teaching and learning, students come to better understand the world.

There might be some disagreement on the second purpose. I’d say it is to inspire students to figure out how they can contribute to helping to make the world better. Certainly, higher education is about scholarship, but it’s also about service. It’s about creativity. It’s about matters of the mind, but it’s also, or at least it should be, about matters of the heart and the soul.

Q: Has the public perception of universities changed in recent years?

Throughout the history—and herstory—of higher education, there have been doubters, those who have critiqued it. But I have a concern, and some polls tell us, in this period in which we are living, many people believe that higher education is not contributing in a positive way to American life.

That’s something that we need to work on, those of us who are deeply engaged in and care about higher education, because I think when one looks with as much objectivity as possible, the truth is, and it’s always been, that higher education contributes substantially.

Q: You’ve led two historically black colleges for women. What is the role of special mission institutions?

In my view, we still need special mission institutions. Remember Brandeis, Notre Dame, and Brigham Young are special mission institutions.

With respect to historically black colleges and universities (HBCU), not every African American wants to or does go to an HBCU. The same is true of women and women’s colleges. But for those who wish that kind of education, and if the fit is right, it’s almost magical.

I think it is as basic as having an entire community believe that you can. On these campuses, we believe that black students can do whatever they set their minds to do. On the women’s campuses, we believe that women can reach heights that have not been imagined for women.

HBCUs are not totally free of racism. Women’s colleges are not utopias where there are no expressions of gender inequality or sexism. But they come far closer than at our predominately white and co-ed institutions.

Q: One of the big issues with higher education now is cost. How do we solve the affordability problem?

The affordability question is highly complex and serious. James Baldwin said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed that is not faced.” I believe that this is a perfect example. Colleges and universities are not just raising tuitions so they can make big profits. Pell grants are no longer at least a reasonable response to the affordability question.

We’ve got to figure this out because, in a democracy, accessibility to education is fundamental. The idea that something as precious, as powerful, as a solid education is only accessible to some and not to others, is an assault upon democracy.

Q: You came out of retirement to lead the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art. Why was the draw so strong?

I’ve managed, systematically, to get a failing grade in retirement.

I grew up in the South, in the days of legalized segregation—you could also call it state-sponsored racism. I didn’t have access to symphony halls. I didn’t have access to art museums. I still remember the library that I went to in order to travel the world through books, was the A. L. Lewis Colored Public Library.

As a young girl, I fell in love with the visual arts, especially African and African-American art. I went off to Fisk University at age 15 and began to see the real works of art for which we only had reproductions in my home. From Fisk, I went to Oberlin, where the Allen Memorial Art Gallery was a special place of solace for me

The opportunity with the Smithsonian wasn’t something I sought; I was asked to apply. My doctorate is in anthropology, not art history, so I was reluctant, but they told me they were looking for a leader, not an art historian. It was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. The work was an almost indescribable joy.

Generally, our museums across America do not reflect who America is, nor do they reflect how our world looks. They need to be far more diverse in terms of their boards, staff, exhibitions, educational programs, and visitorship.

What the African art museum has is a unique opportunity because it can speak to something that binds us together. If one is human, just go back far enough, I mean way back, and we have all come from a single place. It is called Africa.

Here’s a museum that says to its visitors, “No matter who you are, by race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, ability or disability, or nationality, come to a place where the visual arts connect you to the very cradle of humanity.”

During those eight years when I had the joy of being the director of the National Museum of African Art, I would greet our visitors by saying “Welcome home! Welcome to a place that presents the diverse and dynamic, the exquisite arts of Africa, humanity’s original home.”

Q: Do you think that our education and cultural institutions are properly valued in our society?

I have to say no. Because if we did, we would take better care of them. If we did, we would make sure that not some but all of our educational institutions from kindergarten through post-secondary education, into graduate and professional schools, have the means to do what needs to be done.

If we really value all of our cultural expressions, whether it’s dance or music, visual arts, theater, when there is a budget shortfall, we wouldn’t say, “These are the first things to go.” We wouldn’t say, “Kids can do without music in their public school.” It’s one thing to say we love an institution; it’s another to care for and protect an institution. I think we can do far better.

Importance of Higher Education

Today, education is much more than books and degrees. Today, education means opening your mind to a whole new world, the world in which there are no geographical barriers to knowledge. Today, education means having an acceptance and respect for the entire human community, around you. To me, education is much more than a good degree, for the purpose of acquiring a highly paid job. I feel that education in today’s times is a tool with which we can transform our society, and as such, education opens our minds to acceptance of new societies and newer cultures. I believe that education is the perfect means for the social development of any society. For any culture to thrive and flourish, the education system must be sound. An excellent example of nations flourishing at a rapid pace due to education is the high growth rate of countries like India and China. India as a country has taken just fifteen years to be recognized as a global force. The fast-developing economy of India has been boosted simply by the efforts of one single generation of educated individuals who have placed India firmly on the world map for years to come. And this has been possible only by the tools of education.

Education creates awareness in the minds of individuals, a new sense of responsibility, openness to change and progress, all of which are important factors in the development of a nation. Each educated person makes a great difference to the country as a whole.

Education positively impacts the health of citizens. Higher education enables people to think critically and evaluate the pros and cons before makingmaking crucial decisions about important issue in life, whether it be health, fitness, careers, or even the choice of food to be consumed, daily.

Education is indeed a powerful means to remove the prejudices from our mind relating to gender, class, caste or race. An educated person will generally respect human kind in all its forms.

Education enables us to think deeply about primary concerns in life, especially pollution. Protection of the earth and its environment has never been at such a focus ever in the history of humanity. As educated people, we know and realize our responsibilities in protecting the earth and its atmosphere. Higher educational thinking also fosters a desire for improvement in the quality of life of individuals. It has been proven by studies that people who are highly educated have better access to health, from increased awareness of dietary practices and resultantly better and healthier lifestyle. In nations where education activities are on the rise, the youth are more mature and level headed. This improves the entire scenario of the nation as a whole as there is reduced criminal activity.

In this age and era of globalization, education to me is as important as consuming food. Besides providing monetary freedom, the benefits of education are numerous, not only to an individual but to the entire society as a whole, which is ultimately the most influencing factor in the success of any nation, small or big.

Education is not the window, but the gateway to the new global community, which is devoid.

By providing greater stability, education impacts the confidence levels of persons in an extremely positive way, thereby paving the way for greater success stories in the world, now and forever.

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IvyPanda. (2023, November 23). Importance of Higher Education. https://ivypanda.com/essays/importance-of-higher-education/

"Importance of Higher Education." IvyPanda , 23 Nov. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/importance-of-higher-education/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Importance of Higher Education'. 23 November.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Importance of Higher Education." November 23, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/importance-of-higher-education/.

1. IvyPanda . "Importance of Higher Education." November 23, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/importance-of-higher-education/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Importance of Higher Education." November 23, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/importance-of-higher-education/.

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What you need to know about higher education

UNESCO, as the only United Nations agency with a mandate in higher education, works with countries to ensure all students have equal opportunities to access and complete good quality higher education with internationally recognized qualifications. It places special focus on developing countries, notably Africa. 

Why does higher education matter?  

Higher education is a rich cultural and scientific asset which enables personal development and promotes economic, technological and social change. It promotes the exchange of knowledge, research and innovation and equips students with the skills needed to meet ever changing labour markets. For students in vulnerable circumstances, it is a passport to economic security and a stable future. 

What is the current situation? 

Higher education has changed dramatically over the past decades with increasing enrolment, student mobility, diversity of provision, research dynamics and technology. Some 254 million students are enrolled in universities around the world – a number that has more than doubled in the last 20 years and is set to expand. Yet despite the boom in demand, the overall enrolment ratio is 42% with large differences between countries and regions. More than 6.4 million students are pursuing their further education abroad. And among the world’s more than 82 million refugees, only 7% of eligible youth are enrolled in higher education, whereas comparative figures for primary and secondary education are 68% and 34%, respectively ( UNHCR) . The COVID-19 pandemic further disrupted the way higher education was provided.

What does UNESCO do to ensure access for everyone to higher education? 

UNESCO's work is aligned with Target 4.3 of SDG 4 which aims, by 2030, “to ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university”. To achieve this, UNESCO supports countries by providing knowledge, evidence-based information and technical assistance in the development of higher education systems and policies based on the equal distribution of opportunities for all students. 

UNESCO supports countries to enhance recognition, mobility and inter-university cooperation through the ratification and implementation of the Global Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications concerning Higher Education and regional recognition conventions . To tackle the low rate of refugee youth in higher education UNESCO has developed the UNESCO Qualifications Passport for Refugees and Vulnerable Migrants , a tool which makes it easier for those groups with qualifications to move between countries. The passport brings together information on educational and other qualifications, language, work history. UNESCO places a special focus on Africa with projects such as the Higher Technical Education in Africa for a technical and innovative workforce supported by China Funds-in-Trust.  

​​​​​​​How does UNESCO ensure the quality of higher education? 

The explosion in demand for higher education and increasing internationalization means UNESCO is expanding its work on quality assurance, helping Member States countries to establish their own agencies and mechanisms to enhance quality and develop policies particularly in developing countries and based on the Conventions. Such bodies are absent in many countries, making learners more vulnerable to exploitative providers.  

It also facilitates the sharing of good practices and innovative approaches to widen inclusion in higher education. As part of this work, it collaborates with the International Association of Universities to produce the World Higher Education Database which provides information on higher education systems, credentials and institutions worldwide. 

​​​​​​​How does UNESCO keep pace with digital change?  

The expansion of connectivity worldwide has boosted the growth of online and blended learning, and revealed the importance of digital services, such as Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Higher Education Management Information Systems in helping higher education institutions utilize data for better planning, financing and quality. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this transformation and increased the number of providers and the range of degree offerings from cross-border to offshore education.  The Organization provides technical support and policy advice on innovative approaches to widening access and inclusion including through the use of ICTs and by developing new types of learning opportunities both on-campus and online. 

How does UNESCO address the needs of a changing job market?

Labour markets are experiencing rapid changes, with increased digitization and greening of economies, but also the rising internationalization of higher education. UNESCO places a strong emphasis on developing science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education, indispensable to sustainable development and innovation. It aims to strengthen skills development for youth and adults, particularly literacy, TVET, STEM and higher education to meet individual, labour market and societal demands.  

Related items

• Higher education

The Promise of Higher Education

Essays in Honour of 70 Years of IAU

• Open Access
• © 2021

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• Hilligje van't Land 0 ,
• Andreas Corcoran 1 ,
• Diana-Camelia Iancu 2

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National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania

• This book is available through open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access
• Highlights the 70-year legacy of the International Association of Universities
• Provides an overview of the higher education landscape, and discusses pertinent, forward-thinking topics
• Gives international coverage as well as regional balance
• Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

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Table of contents (65 chapters)

Front matter, introduction.

• Hilligje van’t Land, Andreas Corcoran, Diana-Camelia Iancu

70 Years of Higher Education Cooperation and Advocacy

To cohere and act as one: iau—the global voice of higher education.

• Pam Fredman

Stepping Up Global Collaboration to Protect Higher Education’s Future

• Stefania Giannini

The IAU and Contemporary Global Challenges: A Latin American Point of View

• Juan Ramón de la Fuente

Drivers of Globalisation of Higher Education over the Last 70 Years

• Andrew J. Deeks

A Personal View on Two Decades of Recent IAU History

• Eva Egron-Polak

IAU President Walter Kamba (1990–1995): A Man of Conscience

• Goolam Mohamedbhai

Between Global Inequalities and World Ethics. Personal Reflections on Internationalisation of Higher Education over the Past Seventy Years

• Pavel Zgaga

Creating Democratic Civic Universities in a Post-COVID-19 World: The IAU and Global Collaboration

• Ira Harkavy
• Remus Pricopie

Facilitating International Cooperation

The role of iau in facilitating international cooperation.

• Ranbir Singh

Universities, Associations, and Internationalization: Powerful Forces for Our Time

• Laura E. Rumbley

A Global View of Internationalisation: What Next?

• Elspeth Jones, Hans de Wit

The Importance of Internationalization Today and the Leadership Role of IAU

• Jocelyne Gacel-Ávila

International Collaboration: Necessary, But Challenging

• Jeroen Huisman

Getting Unstuck with Internationalization at Home: Seizing the Post-pandemic Moment

• Madeleine Green

Levelling up International Higher Education: Universities, Nations and Global Goals

• Open access
• International Association of Universities
• Relevance and value of higher education
• Fundamental principles of higher education
• International co-operation for higher education
• Changing landscape of universities
• IAU principles
• 70 years of IAU

About this book

This book is a collection of short essays, accessible through open access, which takes the interested reader on a tour across the global higher education landscape. It addresses pertinent themes and challenges in higher education. To mark the 70 th anniversary of the International Association of Universities (IAU) and its role in higher education since 1950, experts from around the world share their insights into higher education’s recent past, present and future. The book is divided into six parts:

Part I – “70 years of Higher Education Cooperation and Advocacy” looks back at key events in  IAU’s history, its mission and significant activities over time, and remarks on the  current global context informing its quest to promote academic partnerships and solidarity on a global scale.

Part II – “Facilitating International Cooperation” provides for different perspectives on the transformation of the internationalisation of higher education and the contribution of higher education to international cooperation.

Part III – “Coding the Values” debates the values upon which higher education was, is and will have to be built to provide for a democratic and inclusive society.

Part IV – “The Changing Landscape” analyses various aspects of the transformation of higher education in an evolving context across the globe.

Part V – “The Promise of Education” reflects on the role of higher education, its ideals and shortfalls and what it must do to stay true to its promise to help shape our societies.

Part VI – “Opening up – The Future of Higher Education” focuses on future scenarios of higher education and call on the reader to envision a different kind of higher education and reimagine the contribution of higher education to society, as well as future roles for the IAU.

The book will be of interest to higher education policy makers and academics. It is also of interest to the general public, as it provides a comprehensive overview of the challenges higher education institutions currently face and suggests scenarios of what the future of education might look like.

Editors and Affiliations

Hilligje van't Land, Andreas Corcoran

Diana-Camelia Iancu

About the editors

Hilligje van’t Land is Secretary General of the International Association of Universities and Executive Director of the International Universities Bureau. Over the past years, initially as Director and later as Deputy Secretary General, she co-supervised the overall programmatic activities of the IAU and the everyday work of the secretariat, she engaged in developing the IAU Membership base and strengthening the IAU membership development strategy. Prior to joining the IAU, Dr van’t Land taught comparative francophone literature at the Universities of Groningen, Laval (Québec) and Avignon et les Pays du Vaucluse. For five years she also headed the Institute for American Universities in Avignon. She has been very active in the field of Canadian Studies globally, since 1987. Hilligje van’t Land holds a PhD in comparative contemporary francophone literatures from Groningen University, in the Netherlands and completed a post doc research period at Laval University (Québec).

Andreas Corcoran took up the position as Deputy Secretary General of the International Association of Universities in 2019. Prior to joining the IAU, Dr. Corcoran was Director of Higher Education at SOFIA in Rome, in charge of financial, academic and institutional development and governance of a university in Tanzania. Previously, Dr. Corcoran worked for the University of Kent in the UK, the Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt Foundation and the German Historical Museum in Berlin. Dr. Corcoran holds a PhD in History and Civilization from the European University Institute in Florence and a Master’s from Trinity College Dublin.

Diana-Camelia Iancu is senior fellow of the International Association of Universities since 2019 and Dean of public administration, at the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (Bucharest), since 2012. For the past decade, she has taught comparative public management in Bucharest and Nijmegen (at RadboudUniversity) and assumed different academic assignments in Greece, France, Slovenia, Spain and the US. Her research interests include international development and administrative capacity building in transitional countries, as well as quality assurance in teaching public administration. Dr. Iancu holds a PhD cum laude in public administration from the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration.

Bibliographic Information

Book Title : The Promise of Higher Education

Book Subtitle : Essays in Honour of 70 Years of IAU

Editors : Hilligje van't Land, Andreas Corcoran, Diana-Camelia Iancu

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67245-4

Publisher : Springer Cham

eBook Packages : Education , Education (R0)

Copyright Information : The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021

Hardcover ISBN : 978-3-030-67244-7 Published: 02 September 2021

Softcover ISBN : 978-3-030-67247-8 Published: 02 September 2021

eBook ISBN : 978-3-030-67245-4 Published: 01 September 2021

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XV, 442

Number of Illustrations : 3 b/w illustrations, 4 illustrations in colour

Topics : Higher Education , International and Comparative Education , Educational Policy and Politics

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How to Write the George Mason University Essays 2023-2024

A  relatively young university, George Mason University was established in 1957 as a branch of the University of Virginia, before becoming an independent school in 1972. Today, the Fairfax County, Virginia-based institution has gained recognition as a top research university.

Keep reading to learn all about the George Mason essays and how to tackle them.

George Mason University Supplemental Essay Prompts

All applicants.

Prompt: What is your motivation for pursuing higher education? Why do you believe George Mason University is the right institution for you? (Required for those applying test-optional) (400 words)

Honors Applicants

Prompt: To complete your application to the Honors College, please choose and respond to one (1) of the prompts above in no more than 500 words.

Option 1:  George Mason University is Virginia’s largest public research university. As a Tier-1 research institution, every day, our faculty, staff, and students work to address unanswered questions, unresolved challenges, and problems that impact a wide variety of populations. In the Honors College, you’ll have opportunities to do this sort of work — and maybe even answer questions and solve problems that matter to you. Tell us about one question, challenge, or problem that you’d like to work to better understand or address during your time at Mason. Introduce this issue, and then explain why it matters to you and why it might matter to others. Feel free to be creative- research and inquiry can exist in unlikely places.

Option 2:  The art we see, the stories we read, and the words we hear have the power to move us and to change us. Tell us about a time that you’ve been moved to act by something you read, a speech you heard, or a work of art that you experienced. What was it, and how did it impact you? What did you do — or what will you do — in response?

What is your motivation for pursuing higher education? Why do you believe George Mason University is the right institution for you? (Required for those applying test-optional) (400 words)

While this essay is required for students who are applying test-optional, we recommend that you complete it even if you do submit standardized test scores.

This is a classic “Why Us” prompt, asking you to explain why you’re interested in attending George Mason over other colleges. Remember, however, that it’s not just about the college and the qualities that appeal to you about it — it’s also about you : your personal and professional goals, what you hope to get out of your education, and how George Mason will support you in achieving these goals.

The “Why this college” essay may seem relatively straightforward on the surface, but it requires a certain amount of nuance. It also demands research on your part, in order for you to go beyond surface-level details like George Mason’s proximity to Washington, DC and the opportunities the location provides. It must also go beyond details you can find from a cursory look on the website.

Instead, use specific details, taking a factual approach — which doesn’t mean it should be devoid of feeling — when describing your goals and how George Mason will enhance your journey.

For example, perhaps you plan to pursue conservation as a profession. Because George Mason is home to the Smithsonian-Mason School of Conservation, the only program of its kind in the country, this is an opportunity to describe why this program appeals to you and how your background complements it. 

You might offer anecdotes about your experience working with wildlife — perhaps you volunteered at a zoo in high school or led a fundraiser to support preserving endangered species. Then, draw a connection between your experiences and George Mason’s program, explaining why this is an ideal place to nurture your goals, since you’ll have the opportunity to receive hands-on training from leading Smithsonian scientists toward the goal of supporting a biodiverse planet.

Dig deep, finding specific names of prospective mentors and research or work they’ve done that you admire. Remember to keep connecting your experiences to what George Mason can offer. This essay is about more than why George Mason is the right school for you — it’s also about you .

To complete your application to the Honors College, please choose and respond to one (1) of the prompts above in no more than 500 words.

The selective Honors College at George Mason is a prestigious school designed to promote inquiry and critical thinking. If you are applying to the Honors College, you will be asked to respond to one of the following additional prompts, along with writing the essay above.

Honors Applicants, Option 1

George mason university is virginia’s largest public research university. as a tier-1 research institution, every day, our faculty, staff, and students work to address unanswered questions, unresolved challenges, and problems that impact a wide variety of populations. in the honors college, you’ll have opportunities to do this sort of work — and maybe even answer questions and solve problems that matter to you. tell us about one question, challenge, or problem that you’d like to work to better understand or address during your time at mason. introduce this issue, and then explain why it matters to you and why it might matter to others. feel free to be creative- research and inquiry can exist in unlikely places..

Colleges seek students who will be a credit to their institutions. In other words, they want their graduates to make them look good. This prompt is a version of the archetypal “impact on community” prompt, which asks you to describe how you plan to make a difference to a variety of communities and/or the efforts you’re currently undertaking.

Inquiry is at the heart of the Honors College at George Mason. The school seeks out students who are curious and want to solve problems. This prompt requires real thought and asks that you grapple with the issues that are most important to you. Avoid cliches here — of course you want to solve world hunger and achieve peace in the Middle East. Instead, be specific in pinpointing an issue that really means something to you.

For example, perhaps you’re passionate about children and young adults who attend school while struggling with homelessness. Discuss why this issue is important to you — maybe you volunteered with underserved communities or even have acquaintances struggling with this problem — and why you want to study it further. 

Bear in mind that you don’t have to solve the problem in or with your essay. The adcom doesn’t expect you to have the answers. They want to gain insight into your thought process and how you grapple with particularly challenging scenarios. They also want to see evidence of your own curiosity and desire to work through complex issues.

Discuss some approaches you would take in order to further investigate the problem — the resources you would use, the research you would pursue, and so on.

Again, this is not about answers — it’s about inquiry and curiosity. It’s also about engaging with complex scenarios and the world around you.

Honors Applicants, Option 2

The art we see, the stories we read, and the words we hear have the power to move us and to change us. tell us about a time that you’ve been moved to act by something you read, a speech you heard, or a work of art that you experienced. what was it, and how did it impact you what did you do — or what will you do — in response.

This is another spin on the “impact on community” prompt, one that also asks you to demonstrate your interests and reveal your sources of inspiration. 

One danger with this prompt is choosing something that’s cliche. George Mason will almost certainly receive numerous Black Lives Matter-inspired responses, and while the movement is, of course, important, and might have particular importance to you, you want your essay to be unique. Moreover, the prompt asks you to choose a particular work, something more specific, that has an enormous impact on you.

Think outside the box. This doesn’t have to be a weighty book like Caste , which has obvious implications that might compel you to act. Perhaps, for instance, you saw an episode of Law & Order: SVU about child trafficking, and it inspired you to research and get involved with efforts to combat it. 

Spend less time describing the piece and more time explaining the impact it has on you. A lengthy description of the item will take up too much space, and you only have 500 words. Plus, the goal of the essay is not to give a summary of something that inspires you but to demonstrate how and why you’re inspired by it and how it compels you to act. 

Your essay will most likely take a narrative form and should include plenty of anecdotes to engage the reader and bring authenticity to the story. You should show how you feel, why you feel that way, and what your reaction is, without, of course, telling your reader those things bluntly.

Where to Get Your George Mason Essays Edited

Do you want feedback on your George Mason essays? After rereading your essays countless times, it can be difficult to evaluate your writing objectively. That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool , where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays. 

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools.  Find the right advisor for you  to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!

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12 Reasons Why Higher Education Is Important

What is higher education? Well, higher education is considered the last step in formal education. It follows the achievement of a high school diploma and generally involves the completion of a degree. Most recognized definitions explain higher education within the confines of a college or university that awards degrees, and in some cases, certifications.

The Great Debate

Questions over the efficacy of a college degree continue to challenge the higher education community. Is it really worth the investment?

A college degree is expensive. There’s really no way around that fact. If you cut away the population of students who are going full-ride, you still have a substantial number of degree-seekers who will come out of college with insurmountable debt. It’s a terrifying fact that many use as reasoning not to pursue a degree.

But, let’s take a step back and think about college education as more than investing in a future job. Instead, let’s think of it in terms of what it affords — an opportunity to transform.  

The importance of Higher Education: 12 Reasons Why

The obvious.

Let’s start with the obvious — there is a serious wage gap between those with and without a degree. And that gap is projected to grow. In fact, a collective study by the Center on Education and Georgetown University found that people who hold a bachelor’s degree and work full-time earn 84% more in their lifetime than those with a high school diploma.

People with a college education also enjoy other benefits like health and life insurance, both of which lead to a longer lifespan. Thus, when evaluating the ROI for a college education, it’s important to look at the big picture. Over a lifetime, those with a degree simply earn more — whether that is money, benefits, or both.

The Future and AI

The job market is changing dramatically to match the growth of artificial intelligence. As technology becomes smarter and more sophisticated, companies are able to filter out certain roles in favor of automation. This means that jobs are changing. Roles that used to rely on human interaction are being replaced with artificial intelligence.

In wake of that change, there will be an increased demand in jobs that require an advanced understanding of AI technologies. Now, more than ever, it is important to invest in an education that can handle those needs. And yet, there are still other important skills to consider…

A Well-Rounded Dynamo

The job market can be very tough, and companies are actively looking for candidates with well-rounded educations.

It’s not enough to have a degree in engineering or math. Employers want their candidates to be well-spoken with strong proficiencies in communication and writing. They want employees who can deliver on their chosen disciplines, while also presenting impeccable soft skill knowledge. They want to see an engineer who has taken a couple of years of French, and they delight in finding a math major who minored in public communications.

It seems like a lot to ask for, and it is. But, the reasoning for this is actually quite simple. Companies want candidates who have a breadth of knowledge — knowledge that can serve them in any challenge. The strongest candidates are those who can demonstrate a robust repertoire of college classes, across several disciplines and structures. A college education enables students to build this complex list of skills.

Learning How to Think

Higher education isn’t just about earning a degree. If we step back and examine what a college experience entails, we can see that it is more than just attending classes and taking exams. In fact, higher education is about learning new ways of thinking and acquiring problem-solving skills.

Students are asked to reason outside of their comfort zones. They are taught to engage in critical thinking as both an individual and as a member of a classroom. In many cases, students are required to stretch their imagination in both oral and written works, often presented in front of their peers. In other words, a college education teaches students to think differently.

Outside of earning a degree, a student will graduate with new and improved skills in critical thinking, analytics, written and oral communication, and group problem-solving.

International Education

One of the more obvious benefits of a college education is the opportunity to study abroad.

Though not always compatible with every degree option, most schools with strong abroad programs are flexible in helping students pursue international study. We could dedicate a whole article to the benefits of studying abroad, but the most important takeaways are increased experience in global education, independence, language proficiency, and cross-cultural learning excursions that enhance classroom instruction.

Study abroad ranges in duration from a few weeks in the summer to an entire year, and many institutions offer special pricing for their programs. In some cases, an institution will have an established program abroad, that allows students to study at the same price of tuition as in their home campus. It is rare to have that kind of opportunity outside of a college education.

Immersive + Experiential Learning Opportunities

Today’s colleges and universities are investing a lot of time and energy into immersive and experiential learning opportunities . The future is hands-on! Students learn best when they have outside experiences to augment classroom instruction, and immersive and experiential learning takes students into real-world settings like practicums, hospitals, and internships. Within these professional environments, students can practice the theories they learn in the classroom.

They are also given new responsibilities that, on a smaller scale, match the work environment they are interested in. Finally, students can use these experiences to test their interest in their passions. Sometimes, an internship or practicum is all that a student needs to realize they do or do not want to pursue their chosen field of study.

Some colleges and universities allow undergraduate students to engage in research opportunities independently or alongside a professor. This is a huge benefit to students who are looking to gain some experience before pursuing a master’s degree, where research is almost always a requirement of the program.

In other cases, some schools actually require their undergraduates to complete a capstone or final thesis as a component of graduation. No matter what the circumstance — even if not conducted for the purpose of graduate school admittance — research teaches valuable skills in project management and writing etiquette. This kind of experience is very attractive to employers who are looking for evidence of dedication and personal discipline.

It cannot be overstated that alumni play a major role in the future of higher education. They give back to their communities, they provide gifts to their institutions, and in many cases, they offer up a network for students who are looking to land a job after college.

A strong alumni network can go a long way in the job search , with many alumni eager to help recent graduates find an opportunity within their field of study. Some institutions even invite their alumni to come back to campus and act as panel members for upperclassmen. Students are given the chance to ask vital questions about their industry, while alumni can offer up advice , information, and even networking opportunities.

Active Community Members

People with a college education are more likely to get involved in their community. It is also true that a degree informs on more than just one’s major. Higher education explores complex issues regarding health, the environment, business, and politics.

When students are educated to examine multiple issues, across several industries and disciplines, they learn to assess today’s problems from an interdisciplinary point of view.  It is that very skill within higher education that equips graduates to be more active community members and smarter voters.

Personal Growth and Independence

If we think of earning a degree within the traditional undergraduate track, we can consider a college education to be an important phase of independence and problem-solving.

Undergraduate students are inundated with pivotal changes, many of which take place outside of the classroom. Students must learn how to manage their time, how to deal with new people and roommates, how to talk to their professors, and how to navigate their new, social settings. Most importantly, students must gain the independence to make these decisions on their own.

A college education is so much more than tackling new challenges in the classroom. It’s about learning how to manage new-found independence in a way that is practical and safe.

True Passions

Some high schoolers know what they want to study in college. For those lucky few who have found their passions early in life, a college education is a necessary means to an end. For many other students who are on the fence about their chosen field of study, there is hope. A college education affords individuals the opportunity to discover their passions.

Most schools do not require their students to commit to a major right away, allowing for some freedom to explore different options. In fact, many first-year advisors strongly encourage their students to take as many interesting classes as possible. Institutions know that most incoming freshmen will encounter some confusion when it comes to selecting a field of study, so elective courses are offered up as a way to explore possible interests.

Clubs, Groups, and Extracurriculars

Colleges and universities are big on promoting extracurricular activities to strengthen resumes. They sometimes refer to this as an “activities resume.” Companies want to see that candidates spent their college days doing more than just studying. They want to see evidence of leadership and participation in clubs and organizations.

A college education allows students to get involved in these extra-curricular activities. So, even if a student is pursuing a degree in computer science, they can still demonstrate leadership experience by serving as a committee member for their fraternity or sorority. Students can also show off their participation in language clubs, community-service organizations, or simply groups dedicated to a certain passion.

Why Is Higher Education Important?

The world is changing. Technology is developing beyond our wildest dreams, and complex issues in business, environment, and politics continue to challenge our society. Higher education prepares students to meet these challenges with grit and determination.

A college education is more than classroom instruction. It is a holistic journey that explores facets of individuality, perseverance, and skill. A degree is about learning how to think, communicate, and deliver. More realistically, it can be considered as a transformation — from potential to realization.

Are you ready to earn your degree? Check out our undergraduate and adult programs, today!

Importance Of Higher Education In 21st Century Essay Example

In the 21st century, a college education is crucial for success. In fact, those with a bachelor’s degree or higher have consistently been found to be more successful than those without one. It is critical that all students understand this and make it their goal to pursue an education at any level they can manage. This sample will explore some of the benefits of why a college degree matters in today’s world as well as provide tips on how to plan for your future needs and goals.

Essay Example On Importance Of Higher Education In 21st Century In The USA

• Thesis Statement – Importance Of Higher Education Essay
• Introduction – Importance Of Higher Education Essay
• Benefits Of Higher Education
• Conclusion – Importance Of Higher Education Essay

Thesis Statement – Importance Of Higher Education Essay Higher education is extremely important in our modern-day world to succeed financially and socially. Introduction – Importance Of Higher Education Essay It’s no secret that the current state of the economy is not very promising for most people who are entering college. Many students worry about their future and do not know if it will be possible to find a job after they get out of college or even land an internship with any potential employers at all. Along with this high level of anxiety, students must also take into consideration the rising cost of tuition fees at institutions across the country which makes getting an education more expensive than ever before. A wise investment many individuals choose to make is acquiring a college degree, but there is much more to higher education than just finding employment upon graduating. It can actually benefit one in numerous ways such as improving health conditions and raising living standards among others. Consult Essay Writing Expert & Get Premium Essay Topics Order Now Main Body – Importance Of Higher Education Essay Benefits Of  Higher Education Before this, we discussed Higher education so let’s take a look at the benefits. Below you will get some important points of higher education after reading that you will get the importance of higher education. Make More Money When you will complete your higher education you will have a Master’s degree in your hand. The degree is the symbol that you have vast knowledge in your field. You will get a higher job position in top companies and you will experience that you are earning more money in comparison with your friends who have not completed higher education in the same field. Professionalism Employers always hire professionals. Everyone wants to become successful personally and professionally but Professionalism doesn’t come with a degree your behavior and other skills make you professional So pursue the related field for your higher education then You will become familiar with the working atmosphere of the industries related to your field. You Will Learn To Solve Problems Completing higher education is not a simple task. You have to face various problems during your studies and it will polish your skills and talent. It makes you able how to solve problems quickly? You will learn the analytical and critical learning approach here. Promotions People who have completed master’s degrees got promoted quickly in comparison with other employees without higher education. Advantage during interviews Employers welcome scholars having good knowledge and high degree. A Master’s degree is a symbol that a person has excellent knowledge; he/she will get an extra advantage during interviews over the people with a bachelor’s degree. Deep knowledge Higher education offers you complete knowledge. Professors and teachers will teach you all the basics related to your subjects. You will get both theoretical and practical knowledge. Lifestyle It will change your complete lifestyle. During higher education, you will get a chance to involve in different-different programs and functions. You will learn various things that will enhance your lifestyle. You will become more modern than before. Greater Skills You will gain more skills from college and universities. There are various tasks organized by the college during your studies including time management, intellectual programs, etc. You will get a chance to participate in various extracurricular programs related to sports, culture, etc. Open Atmosphere if you have taken admission in higher education then you will get a chance to meet new people belong to different cultures and communities. You will get the freedom to live your life as you wanted to live. Live your dreams The college will offer you a chance to live your dreams. You will get a chance to prove yourself in other activities like sports You can take a position in the college and university team and prove your talent at a great platform. It can be a turning point in your life; you can get a chance to be selected in the national team of your country or state based on your performance. If you are a good writer, the singer then also you can show your talent to others by participating in various university-level completions. One Time Investment If you are thinking about the tuition fee and another course fee then it’s a one-time investment. You can get loans from banks and other financial institutes for higher studies. Once you will complete your higher education you will definitely get a high salary and soon you will realize that you have paid your loans in a short period of time. Have fun Apart from your studies, you will get a chance to relax. New people and new groups will create a happy atmosphere. Various Options For Higher Education if you have no time to attend the classes, you have an option of distance learning or online learning. You can take admission in the online higher education program. More Opportunities Completing your higher education will open more doors. You can get a job in any sector related to your area of interest. Suppose you have completed your higher education in Information technology then you can get a job as a web designer, web developer, and software engineer and even you can apply for the post of testing engineer. But, a person who has completed a computer course in testing has no knowledge about the development process and will get limited job opportunities. Network  Higher education will also increase your network. You will make new friends and build new contacts. It’s a life and one can need help from anyone at any time. Hire an Essay Writer to Write your Complete Essay on Time Order Now Conclusion – Importance Of Higher Education Essay Higher education is important because it can have many benefits for all students. They improve individual’s physical health, give them access to better job opportunities and help countries gain international prominence. By having more college graduates in the workforce there are high chances of improving living conditions among other things. Overall, this shows why higher education is important in today’s society because it helps people in many different ways that will benefit them for years to come. Consult with USA Essay Writers to Write your College Essay Order Now

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, 53 stellar college essay topics to inspire you.

College Essays

Most colleges and universities in the United States require applicants to submit at least one essay as part of their application. But trying to figure out what college essay topics you should choose is a tricky process. There are so many potential things you could write about!

In this guide, we go over the essential qualities that make for a great college essay topic and give you 50+ college essay topics you can use for your own statement . In addition, we provide you with helpful tips for turning your college essay topic into a stellar college essay.

What Qualities Make for a Good College Essay Topic?

Regardless of what you write about in your personal statement for college , there are key features that will always make for a stand-out college essay topic.

#1: It’s Specific

First off, good college essay topics are extremely specific : you should know all the pertinent facts that have to do with the topic and be able to see how the entire essay comes together.

Specificity is essential because it’ll not only make your essay stand out from other statements, but it'll also recreate the experience for admissions officers through its realism, detail, and raw power. You want to tell a story after all, and specificity is the way to do so. Nobody wants to read a vague, bland, or boring story — not even admissions officers!

For example, an OK topic would be your experience volunteering at a cat shelter over the summer. But a better, more specific college essay topic would be how you deeply connected with an elderly cat there named Marty, and how your bond with him made you realize that you want to work with animals in the future.

Remember that specificity in your topic is what will make your essay unique and memorable . It truly is the key to making a strong statement (pun intended)!

#2: It Shows Who You Are

In addition to being specific, good college essay topics reveal to admissions officers who you are: your passions and interests, what is important to you, your best (or possibly even worst) qualities, what drives you, and so on.

The personal statement is critical because it gives schools more insight into who you are as a person and not just who you are as a student in terms of grades and classes.

By coming up with a real, honest topic, you’ll leave an unforgettable mark on admissions officers.

#3: It’s Meaningful to You

The very best college essay topics are those that hold deep meaning to their writers and have truly influenced them in some significant way.

For instance, maybe you plan to write about the first time you played Skyrim to explain how this video game revealed to you the potentially limitless worlds you could create, thereby furthering your interest in game design.

Even if the topic seems trivial, it’s OK to use it — just as long as you can effectively go into detail about why this experience or idea had such an impact on you .

Don’t give in to the temptation to choose a topic that sounds impressive but doesn’t actually hold any deep meaning for you. Admissions officers will see right through this!

Similarly, don’t try to exaggerate some event or experience from your life if it’s not all that important to you or didn’t have a substantial influence on your sense of self.

#4: It’s Unique

College essay topics that are unique are also typically the most memorable, and if there’s anything you want to be during the college application process, it’s that! Admissions officers have to sift through thousands of applications, and the essay is one of the only parts that allows them to really get a sense of who you are and what you value in life.

If your essay is trite or boring, it won’t leave much of an impression , and your application will likely get immediately tossed to the side with little chance of seeing admission.

But if your essay topic is very original and different, you’re more likely to earn that coveted second glance at your application.

What does being unique mean exactly, though? Many students assume that they must choose an extremely rare or crazy experience to talk about in their essays —but that's not necessarily what I mean by "unique." Good college essay topics can be unusual and different, yes, but they can also be unique takes on more mundane or common activities and experiences .

For instance, say you want to write an essay about the first time you went snowboarding. Instead of just describing the details of the experience and how you felt during it, you could juxtapose your emotions with a creative and humorous perspective from the snowboard itself. Or you could compare your first attempt at snowboarding with your most recent experience in a snowboarding competition. The possibilities are endless!

#5: It Clearly Answers the Question

Finally, good college essay topics will clearly and fully answer the question(s) in the prompt.

You might fail to directly answer a prompt by misinterpreting what it’s asking you to do, or by answering only part of it (e.g., answering just one out of three questions).

Therefore, make sure you take the time to come up with an essay topic that is in direct response to every question in the prompt .

Take this Coalition Application prompt as an example:

What is the hardest part of being a teenager now? What's the best part? What advice would you give a younger sibling or friend (assuming they would listen to you)?

For this prompt, you’d need to answer all three questions (though it’s totally fine to focus more on one or two of them) to write a compelling and appropriate essay.

This is why we recommend reading and rereading the essay prompt ; you should know exactly what it’s asking you to do, well before you start brainstorming possible college application essay topics.

53 College Essay Topics to Get Your Brain Moving

In this section, we give you a list of 53 examples of college essay topics. Use these as jumping-off points to help you get started on your college essay and to ensure that you’re on track to coming up with a relevant and effective topic.

All college application essay topics below are categorized by essay prompt type. We’ve identified six general types of college essay prompts:

Why This College?

Change and personal growth, passions, interests, and goals, overcoming a challenge, diversity and community, solving a problem.

Note that these prompt types could overlap with one another, so you’re not necessarily limited to just one college essay topic in a single personal statement.

• How a particular major or program will help you achieve your academic or professional goals
• A memorable and positive interaction you had with a professor or student at the school
• Something good that happened to you while visiting the campus or while on a campus tour
• A certain class you want to take or a certain professor you’re excited to work with
• Some piece of on-campus equipment or facility that you’re looking forward to using
• Your plans to start a club at the school, possibly to raise awareness of a major issue
• A study abroad or other unique program that you can’t wait to participate in
• How and where you plan to volunteer in the community around the school
• An incredible teacher you studied under and the positive impact they had on you
• How you went from really liking something, such as a particular movie star or TV show, to not liking it at all (or vice versa)
• How yours or someone else’s (change in) socioeconomic status made you more aware of poverty
• A time someone said something to you that made you realize you were wrong
• How your opinion on a controversial topic, such as gay marriage or DACA, has shifted over time
• A documentary that made you aware of a particular social, economic, or political issue going on in the country or world
• Advice you would give to your younger self about friendship, motivation, school, etc.
• The steps you took in order to kick a bad or self-sabotaging habit
• A juxtaposition of the first and most recent time you did something, such as dance onstage
• A book you read that you credit with sparking your love of literature and/or writing
• A school assignment or project that introduced you to your chosen major
• A glimpse of your everyday routine and how your biggest hobby or interest fits into it
• The career and (positive) impact you envision yourself having as a college graduate
• A teacher or mentor who encouraged you to pursue a specific interest you had
• How moving around a lot helped you develop a love of international exchange or learning languages
• A special skill or talent you’ve had since you were young and that relates to your chosen major in some way, such as designing buildings with LEGO bricks
• Where you see yourself in 10 or 20 years
• Your biggest accomplishment so far relating to your passion (e.g., winning a gold medal for your invention at a national science competition)
• A time you lost a game or competition that was really important to you
• How you dealt with the loss or death of someone close to you
• A time you did poorly in a class that you expected to do well in
• How moving to a new school impacted your self-esteem and social life
• A chronic illness you battled or are still battling
• Your healing process after having your heart broken for the first time
• A time you caved under peer pressure and the steps you took so that it won't happen again
• How you almost gave up on learning a foreign language but stuck with it
• Why you decided to become a vegetarian or vegan, and how you navigate living with a meat-eating family
• What you did to overcome a particular anxiety or phobia you had (e.g., stage fright)
• A history of a failed experiment you did over and over, and how you finally found a way to make it work successfully
• Someone within your community whom you aspire to emulate
• A family tradition you used to be embarrassed about but are now proud of
• Your experience with learning English upon moving to the United States
• A close friend in the LGBTQ+ community who supported you when you came out
• A time you were discriminated against, how you reacted, and what you would do differently if faced with the same situation again
• How you navigate your identity as a multiracial, multiethnic, and/or multilingual person
• A project or volunteer effort you led to help or improve your community
• A particular celebrity or role model who inspired you to come out as LGBTQ+
• Your biggest challenge (and how you plan to tackle it) as a female in a male-dominated field
• How you used to discriminate against your own community, and what made you change your mind and eventually take pride in who you are and/or where you come from
• A program you implemented at your school in response to a known problem, such as a lack of recycling cans in the cafeteria
• A time you stepped in to mediate an argument or fight between two people
• An app or other tool you developed to make people’s lives easier in some way
• A time you proposed a solution that worked to an ongoing problem at school, an internship, or a part-time job
• The steps you took to identify and fix an error in coding for a website or program
• An important social or political issue that you would fix if you had the means

How to Build a College Essay in 6 Easy Steps

Once you’ve decided on a college essay topic you want to use, it’s time to buckle down and start fleshing out your essay. These six steps will help you transform a simple college essay topic into a full-fledged personal statement.

Step 1: Write Down All the Details

Once you’ve chosen a general topic to write about, get out a piece of paper and get to work on creating a list of all the key details you could include in your essay . These could be things such as the following:

• Emotions you felt at the time
• Names, places, and/or numbers
• Dialogue, or what you or someone else said
• A specific anecdote, example, or experience
• Descriptions of how things looked, felt, or seemed

If you can only come up with a few details, then it’s probably best to revisit the list of college essay topics above and choose a different one that you can write more extensively on.

Good college essay topics are typically those that:

• You remember well (so nothing that happened when you were really young)
• You're excited to write about
• You're not embarrassed or uncomfortable to share with others
• You believe will make you positively stand out from other applicants

Step 2: Figure Out Your Focus and Approach

Once you have all your major details laid out, start to figure out how you could arrange them in a way that makes sense and will be most effective.

It’s important here to really narrow your focus: you don’t need to (and shouldn’t!) discuss every single aspect of your trip to visit family in Indonesia when you were 16. Rather, zero in on a particular anecdote or experience and explain why and how it impacted you.

Alternatively, you could write about multiple experiences while weaving them together with a clear, meaningful theme or concept , such as how your math teacher helped you overcome your struggle with geometry over the course of an entire school year. In this case, you could mention a few specific times she tutored you and most strongly supported you in your studies.

There’s no one right way to approach your college essay, so play around to see what approaches might work well for the topic you’ve chosen.

If you’re really unsure about how to approach your essay, think about what part of your topic was or is most meaningful and memorable to you, and go from there.

Step 3: Structure Your Narrative

• Beginning: Don’t just spout off a ton of background information here—you want to hook your reader, so try to start in the middle of the action , such as with a meaningful conversation you had or a strong emotion you felt. It could also be a single anecdote if you plan to center your essay around a specific theme or idea.
• Middle: Here’s where you start to flesh out what you’ve established in the opening. Provide more details about the experience (if a single anecdote) or delve into the various times your theme or idea became most important to you. Use imagery and sensory details to put the reader in your shoes.
• End: It’s time to bring it all together. Finish describing the anecdote or theme your essay centers around and explain how it relates to you now , what you’ve learned or gained from it, and how it has influenced your goals.

Step 4: Write a Rough Draft

By now you should have all your major details and an outline for your essay written down; these two things will make it easy for you to convert your notes into a rough draft.

At this stage of the writing process, don’t worry too much about vocabulary or grammar and just focus on getting out all your ideas so that they form the general shape of an essay . It’s OK if you’re a little over the essay's word limit — as you edit, you’ll most likely make some cuts to irrelevant and ineffective parts anyway.

If at any point you get stuck and have no idea what to write, revisit steps 1-3 to see whether there are any important details or ideas you might be omitting or not elaborating on enough to get your overall point across to admissions officers.

Step 5: Edit, Revise, and Proofread

• Sections that are too wordy and don’t say anything important
• Irrelevant details that don’t enhance your essay or the point you're trying to make
• Parts that seem to drag or that feel incredibly boring or redundant
• Areas that are vague and unclear and would benefit from more detail
• Phrases or sections that are awkwardly placed and should be moved around
• Areas that feel unconvincing, inauthentic, or exaggerated

Start paying closer attention to your word choice/vocabulary and grammar at this time, too. It’s perfectly normal to edit and revise your college essay several times before asking for feedback, so keep working with it until you feel it’s pretty close to its final iteration.

This step will likely take the longest amount of time — at least several weeks, if not months — so really put effort into fixing up your essay. Once you’re satisfied, do a final proofread to ensure that it’s technically correct.

Step 6: Get Feedback and Tweak as Needed

After you’ve overhauled your rough draft and made it into a near-final draft, give your essay to somebody you trust , such as a teacher or parent, and have them look it over for technical errors and offer you feedback on its content and overall structure.

Use this feedback to make any last-minute changes or edits. If necessary, repeat steps 5 and 6. You want to be extra sure that your essay is perfect before you submit it to colleges!

Recap: From College Essay Topics to Great College Essays

Many different kinds of college application essay topics can get you into a great college. But this doesn’t make it any easier to choose the best topic for you .

In general, the best college essay topics have the following qualities :

• They’re specific
• They show who you are
• They’re meaningful to you
• They’re unique
• They clearly answer the question

If you ever need help coming up with an idea of what to write for your essay, just refer to the list of 53 examples of college essay topics above to get your brain juices flowing.

Once you’ve got an essay topic picked out, follow these six steps for turning your topic into an unforgettable personal statement :

• Write down all the details
• Figure out your focus and approach
• Structure your narrative
• Write a rough draft
• Edit, revise, and proofread
• Get feedback and tweak as needed

And with that, I wish you the best of luck on your college essays!

What’s Next?

Writing a college essay is no simple task. Get expert college essay tips with our guides on how to come up with great college essay ideas and how to write a college essay, step by step .

You can also check out this huge list of college essay prompts  to get a feel for what types of questions you'll be expected to answer on your applications.

Want to see examples of college essays that absolutely rocked? You're in luck because we've got a collection of 100+ real college essay examples right here on our blog!

Hannah received her MA in Japanese Studies from the University of Michigan and holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Southern California. From 2013 to 2015, she taught English in Japan via the JET Program. She is passionate about education, writing, and travel.

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Importance of Higher Education Essay for Students [500 Words]

January 4, 2021 by Sandeep

Essay on Importance of Higher Education: A person chooses higher education when he wishes to specialize in his study stream. A prosperous career, financial security and higher growth opportunities are some of the benefits of higher education. With higher education, a person becomes more employable with specialised skills and is likely to live a happier and stress-free life. Highly educated citizens tend to be more involved in community building activities and have a greater sense of discipline and accomplishment.

Essay on Importance of Higher Education

Below we have provided Importance of Higher Education Essay, suitable for class 6, 7, 8, 9 & 10.

Higher education provides a gateway to a number of opportunities in the future. It is like a door opening to miscellaneous pathways, and one can always raise his or her living standards by studying higher and higher in life. Higher education equips a man with the specialised skills required to earn higher efficiency levels at the workplace, gives an equal space in this competing world, improves skills and provides scope for better serving our community and working towards its development.

Purpose of Higher Education

The main goal of education is to provide a direction and purpose to one’s life. If you aim to go far in that chosen direction, you need to set the stage for achieving higher education for yourself. We can draw a simple analogy here. A person who knows to drive a motorcycle hits the road with ease, but only in his motorcycle.

Now if he is asked to drive a car that he doesn’t know to drive, he is sure to struggle on the road. Both vehicles ply on the road, but to drive a car it needs extra efforts by the same person, extra skills to manoeuvre the car, etc. So it’s like achieving the next level of learning. Similarly, let us now explore why higher education is important in one’s life:

1. Jumpstart Your Career

If you joined your organisation at the most basic level and you are ambitious to grow up the ladder, you need supportive skills. These extra skills are gained by putting in your time and energy in a course that gives you extra edge to soar higher in your career ladder.

2. Higher Skill Gain

To have confidence in emerging out from one’s familiar shell and taste unexplored waters, it needs lot of courage doubled with knowledge. We can get this only from higher education. All the skills and specializations derived from higher education help a person to explore unexplored territories and achieve higher excellence in life.

3. Intellectual Development

The more you study, the more you broaden your horizon and hence your perspective undergoes a serious transformation. A person who has completed higher education certainly has a better perspective and ideas to help in community and societal development and has the capability to build a citizen friendly nation. Ideas and innovations that are garnered from people who have sought higher education provide a global competing space for the nation as a whole.

4. Follow Your Passion

If we like to prepare a strawberry cake, we try to find out the recipe and try it at our kitchen. Probably, the next time we may try to add some more ingredients to make it more delicious. Another time, we may add a touch of experimentation to give it a better look. So, every time the cake gets a higher level of transformation than the previous one. In a similar way, a person pursues higher education out of passion too! If he loves to specialize in a subject, he would love to study more and gather more knowledge out of his previous degrees. That gives him a better edge than the rest pursuing similar interests.

Issues in Higher Education

Higher education is not all that easy as it seems. Right from financial constraints to lack of funds and scholarships at universities, problems are many. There are many universities and academic centers of excellence that support higher education facilities at their campuses. But, to provide the required infrastructure and research facilities for higher education, it needs an equal amount of investment in terms of time and money on the part of the college.

Hence, higher education costs are usually exorbitant and unreachable to the common masses. A scholarship facility or a provision to avail study loans will definitely help in this matter. Reservation for category and minority students is another issue in our country. The cream of the rank achieving lot gets absorbed by the premier institutes of the country. But the remaining large percentage runs helter skelter to find a good place for an opportunity in higher education.

Essay on Education for School Students and Children

500+ words essay on education.

Education is an important tool which is very useful in everybody’s life. Education is what differentiates us from other living beings on earth. It makes man the smartest creature on earth. It empowers humans and gets them ready to face challenges of life efficiently. With that being said, education still remains a luxury and not a necessity in our country. Educational awareness needs to be spread through the country to make education accessible. But, this remains incomplete without first analyzing the importance of education. Only when the people realize what significance it holds, can they consider it a necessity for a good life. In this essay on Education, we will see the importance of education and how it is a doorway to success.

Importance of Education

Education is the most significant tool in eliminating poverty and unemployment . Moreover, it enhances the commercial scenario and benefits the country overall. So, the higher the level of education in a country, the better the chances of development are.

In addition, this education also benefits an individual in various ways. It helps a person take a better and informed decision with the use of their knowledge. This increases the success rate of a person in life.

Subsequently, education is also responsible for providing with an enhanced lifestyle. It gives you career opportunities that can increase your quality of life.

Similarly, education also helps in making a person independent. When one is educated enough, they won’t have to depend on anyone else for their livelihood. They will be self-sufficient to earn for themselves and lead a good life.

Above all, education also enhances the self-confidence of a person and makes them certain of things in life. When we talk from the countries viewpoint, even then education plays a significant role. Educated people vote for the better candidate of the country. This ensures the development and growth of a nation.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Doorway to Success

To say that education is your doorway to success would be an understatement. It serves as the key which will unlock numerous doors that will lead to success. This will, in turn, help you build a better life for yourself.

An educated person has a lot of job opportunities waiting for them on the other side of the door. They can choose from a variety of options and not be obligated to do something they dislike. Most importantly, education impacts our perception positively. It helps us choose the right path and look at things from various viewpoints rather than just one.

With education, you can enhance your productivity and complete a task better in comparison to an uneducated person. However, one must always ensure that education solely does not ensure success.

It is a doorway to success which requires hard work, dedication and more after which can you open it successfully. All of these things together will make you successful in life.

In conclusion, education makes you a better person and teaches you various skills. It enhances your intellect and the ability to make rational decisions. It enhances the individual growth of a person.

Education also improves the economic growth of a country . Above all, it aids in building a better society for the citizens of a country. It helps to destroy the darkness of ignorance and bring light to the world.

FAQs on Education

Q.1 Why is Education Important?

A.1 Education is important because it is responsible for the overall development of a person. It helps you acquire skills which are necessary for becoming successful in life.

Q.2 How does Education serve as a Doorway to Success?

A.2 Education is a doorway to success because it offers you job opportunities. Furthermore, it changes our perception of life and makes it better.

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The Campus-Left Occupation That Broke Higher Education

Elite colleges are now reaping the consequences of promoting a pedagogy that trashed the postwar ideal of the liberal university.

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F ifty-six years ago this week, at the height of the Vietnam War, Columbia University students occupied half a dozen campus buildings and made two principal demands of the university: stop funding military research, and cancel plans to build a gym in a nearby Black neighborhood. After a week of futile negotiations, Columbia called in New York City police to clear the occupation.

The physical details of that crisis were much rougher than anything happening today. The students barricaded doors and ransacked President Grayson Kirk’s office. “Up against the wall, motherfucker, this is a stick-up,” Mark Rudd, the student leader and future member of the terrorist organization Weather Underground, wrote in an open letter to Kirk, who resigned a few months later. The cops arrested more than 700 students and injured at least 100, while one of their own was permanently disabled by a student.

In other ways, the current crisis brings a strong sense of déjà vu: the chants, the teach-ins, the nonnegotiable demands, the self-conscious building of separate communities, the revolutionary costumes, the embrace of oppressed identities by elite students, the tactic of escalating to incite a reaction that mobilizes a critical mass of students. It’s as if campus-protest politics has been stuck in an era of prolonged stagnation since the late 1960s. Why can’t students imagine doing it some other way?

Perhaps because the structure of protest reflects the nature of universities. They make good targets because of their abiding vulnerability: They can’t deal with coercion, including nonviolent disobedience. Either they overreact, giving the protesters a new cause and more allies (this happened in 1968, and again last week at Columbia), or they yield, giving the protesters a victory and inviting the next round of disruption. This is why Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, no matter what she does, finds herself hammered from the right by Republican politicians and from the left by her own faculty and students, unable to move without losing more ground. Her detractors know that they have her trapped by their willingness to make coercive demands: Do what we say or else we’ll destroy you and your university. They aren’t interested in a debate.

Michael Powell: The unreality of Columbia’s ‘liberated zone’

A university isn’t a state —it can’t simply impose its rules with force. It’s a special kind of community whose legitimacy depends on mutual recognition in a spirit of reason, openness, and tolerance. At the heart of this spirit is free speech, which means more than just chanting, but free speech can’t thrive in an atmosphere of constant harassment. When one faction or another violates this spirit, the whole university is weakened as if stricken with an illness. The sociologist Daniel Bell, who tried and failed to mediate a peaceful end to the Columbia occupation, wrote afterward:

In a community one cannot regain authority simply by asserting it, or by using force to suppress dissidents. Authority in this case is like respect. One can only earn the authority—the loyalty of one’s students—by going in and arguing with them, by engaging in full debate and, when the merits of proposed change are recognized, taking the necessary steps quickly enough to be convincing.

The crackdown at Columbia in 1968 was so harsh that a backlash on the part of faculty and the public obliged the university to accept the students’ demands: a loss, then a win. The war in Vietnam ground on for years before it ended and history vindicated the protesters: another loss, another win. But the really important consequence of the 1968 revolt took decades to emerge. We’re seeing it now on Columbia’s quad and the campuses of elite universities around the country. The most lasting victory of the ’68ers was an intellectual one. The idea underlying their protests wasn’t just to stop the war or end injustice in America. Its aim was the university itself—the liberal university of the postwar years, which no longer exists.

That university claimed a special role in democratic society. A few weeks after the 1968 takeover, the Columbia historian Richard Hofstadter gave the commencement address to a wounded institution. “A university is a community, but it is a community of a special kind,” Hofstadter said—“a community devoted to inquiry. It exists so that its members may inquire into truths of all sorts. Its presence marks our commitment to the idea that somewhere in society there must be an organization in which anything can be studied or questioned—not merely safe and established things but difficult and inflammatory things, the most troublesome questions of politics and war, of sex and morals, of property and national loyalty.” This mission rendered the community fragile, dependent on the self-restraint of its members.

The lofty claims of the liberal university exposed it to charges of all kinds of hypocrisy, not least its entanglement with the American war machine. The Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse, who became a guru to the New Left, coined the phrase repressive tolerance for the veil that hid liberal society’s mechanisms of violence and injustice. In this scheme, no institution, including the university, remained neutral, and radical students embraced their status as an oppressed group.

Charles Sykes: The new rules of political journalism

At Stanford (where my father was an administrator in the late ’60s, and where students took over a campus building the week after the Columbia revolt), white students compared themselves to Black American slaves. To them, the university was not a community dedicated to independent inquiry but a nexus of competing interest groups where power, not ideas, ruled. They rejected the very possibility of a disinterested pursuit of truth. In an imaginary dialogue between a student and a professor, a member of the Stanford chapter of Students for a Democratic Society wrote: “Rights and privacy and these kinds of freedom are irrelevant—you old guys got to get it through your heads that to fight the whole corrupt System POWER is the only answer.”

A long, intricate , but essentially unbroken line connects that rejection of the liberal university in 1968 to the orthodoxy on elite campuses today. The students of the ’68 revolt became professors—the German activist Rudi Dutschke called this strategy the “long march through the institutions”—bringing their revisionist thinking back to the universities they’d tried to upend. One leader of the Columbia takeover returned to chair the School of the Arts film program. “The ideas of one generation become the instincts of the next,” D. H. Lawrence wrote. Ideas born in the ’60s, subsequently refined and complicated by critical theory, postcolonial studies, and identity politics, are now so pervasive and unquestioned that they’ve become the instincts of students who are occupying their campuses today. Group identity assigns your place in a hierarchy of oppression. Between oppressor and oppressed, no room exists for complexity or ambiguity. Universal values such as free speech and individual equality only privilege the powerful. Words are violence. There’s nothing to debate.

The post-liberal university is defined by a combination of moneymaking and activism. Perhaps the biggest difference between 1968 and 2024 is that the ideas of a radical vanguard are now the instincts of entire universities—administrators, faculty, students. They’re enshrined in reading lists and codes of conduct and ubiquitous clichés. Last week an editorial in the Daily Spectator , the Columbia student newspaper, highlighted the irony of a university frantically trying to extricate itself from the implications of its own dogmas: “Why is the same university that capitalizes on the legacy of Edward Said and enshrines The Wretched of the Earth into its Core Curriculum so scared to speak about decolonization in practice?”

A Columbia student, writing to one of his professors in a letter that the student shared with me, explained the dynamic so sharply that it’s worth quoting him at length:

I think [the protests] do speak to a certain failing on Columbia’s part, but it’s a failing that’s much more widespread and further upstream. That is, I think universities have essentially stopped minding the store, stopped engaging in any kind of debate or even conversation with the ideologies which have slowly crept in to every bit of university life, without enough people of good conscience brave enough to question all the orthodoxies. So if you come to Columbia believing in “decolonization” or what have you, it’s genuinely not clear to me that you will ever have to reflect on this belief. And after all this, one day the university wakes up to these protests, panics under scrutiny, and calls the cops on students who are practicing exactly what they’ve been taught to do from the second they walked through those gates as freshmen.

The muscle of independent thinking and open debate, the ability to earn authority that Daniel Bell described as essential to a university’s survival, has long since atrophied. So when, after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Jewish students found themselves subjected to the kind of hostile atmosphere that, if directed at any other minority group, would have brought down high-level rebukes, online cancellations, and maybe administrative punishments, they fell back on the obvious defense available under the new orthodoxy. They said that they felt “unsafe.” They accused pro-Palestinian students of anti-Semitism—sometimes fairly, sometimes not. They asked for protections that other groups already enjoyed. Who could blame them? They were doing what their leaders and teachers had instructed them was the right, the only, way to respond to a hurt.

Adam Serwer: The Republicans who want American carnage

And when the shrewd and unscrupulous Representative Elise Stefanik demanded of the presidents of Harvard and Penn whether calls for genocide violated their universities’ code of conduct, they had no good way to answer. If they said yes, they would have faced the obvious comeback: “Why has no one been punished?” So they said that it depended on the “context,” which was technically correct but sounded so hopelessly legalistic that it led to the loss of their jobs. The response also made nonsense of their careers as censors of unpopular speech. Shafik, of Columbia, having watched her colleagues’ debacle, told the congresswoman what she wanted to hear, then backed it up by calling the cops onto campus—only to find herself denounced on all sides, including by Senator Tom Cotton, who demanded that President Joe Biden deploy the United States military to Columbia, and by her own faculty senate, which threatened a vote of censure.

T he right always knows how to exploit the excesses of the left. It happened in 1968, when the campus takeovers and the street battles between anti-war activists and cops at the Democratic convention in Chicago helped elect Richard Nixon. Republican politicians are already exploiting the chaos on campuses. This summer, the Democrats will gather again in Chicago, and the activists are promising a big show. Donald Trump will be watching.

Elite universities are caught in a trap of their own making, one that has been a long time coming. They’ve trained pro-Palestinian students to believe that, on the oppressor-oppressed axis, Jews are white and therefore dominant, not “marginalized,” while Israel is a settler-colonialist state and therefore illegitimate. They’ve trained pro-Israel students to believe that unwelcome and even offensive speech makes them so unsafe that they should stay away from campus. What the universities haven’t done is train their students to talk with one another.

Ethan Zuckerman Publishes NY Times Guest Essay on Third Party Extensions, Online Civic Life, and Meta Lawsuit

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Ethan Zuckerman, associate professor of public policy, communication, and information, published a guest essay in the New York Times titled, “I Love Facebook. That’s Why I’m Suing Meta.” In the May 5, 2024 essay, Zuckerman argues for a more public-minded internet infrastructure through the use of different browser extensions. He describes how certain extensions, known as “middleware”, can help tailor Facebook user experiences and feasibly help create a more “civic-minded internet.” He also describes how large platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit, have quashed attempts by extension developers to bring them to market through a variety of means.

Zuckerman is developing a Facebook extension known as Unfollow Everything 2.0. Based on an earlier app by Louis Barclay, Unfollow Everything 2.0 would allow users to select how Facebook filters content to them, effectively ceding algorithmic control from Facebook to the public. Zuckerman, along with the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia, sued Meta in a California court earlier this month to allow the release of Unfollow Everything 2.0.

Read the guest essay in its entirety at the New York Times .

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