Resolving to improve your education

With the coming of a New Year comes the inevitable deluge of potential New Year’s resolutions. Be it on TV, radio or online, Americans get lots of ideas for resolutions, sometimes even before Christmas.

While losing weight usually gets the most airtime, followed by more abstract resolutions like spending more time with family and staying happy, here’s one more idea if you haven’t put this year’s resolutions into action yet: take a look at your education.

While I’m sure a good portion of you finished school with a college degree and went on into your line of work, there’s also a good number of people didn’t make the jump from high school to college for any of a number of different reasons.

This probably seems like a tall order – paying for higher education isn’t easy, especially not with the economy as it is, and even with it, there’s no guarantee it will help you land a job, whether you currently have one or not. I also realize school isn’t for everyone.

Look at it like this – whether you’re unemployed or employed yet looking for your dream job, you’ll need every arrow in your quiver you can have, and if you haven’t looked at education, you could be missing out on another edge to set you apart from the masses.

Surveys show that there are fewer people living in Michigan with a bachelor’s degree than ever before. That’s a loss for the state in able, skilled, educated workers. That’s also a direct result of what many see as a two-way fork in the road – either go right into the workforce after high school or go to a four-year college.

There are always happy mediums – if you don’t want a four-year college, try a community college. There’s one right in town, in case you haven’t noticed, and they give out good educations. Hopefully that’s the other part of that statistic about bachelor’s degrees – hopefully some of those people are opting for an associate degree rather than a bachelor’s, but who knows.

Community colleges are easy to enroll into, they’re more numerous than universities with more regional campuses, and they’re easier on the wallet, too. An associate degree isn’t as prestigious as a bachelor’s, but having any degree attached to your name shows potential employers you have patience, work ethic and have put a measurable amount of time into higher education.

And if you’re one of those people who think that community colleges are just for people who can’t get into “real” colleges, think again. I didn’t think anyone thought like that until I decided to go to Kellogg Community College out of high school. I made the honor roll every semester, I was in class every day, but those are the kind of things I heard as my senior class approached graduation, from my perfectly intelligent peers who were looking at going off to MSU or U of M or what not.

If you think a boost to your education would help you out of your current situation, look up your local community college online. If you want to, start out with classes you could apply to your field or places you’re weak in. Just remember that if you do, employers would rather see “associate degree” than “11 credits taken in…” – that shows you’re well rounded and also speaks for your grades.