Focus on Education: To College Or Not To College–That is the Question By: Anothony Pellegrino

In a few weeks about 300 senior students will be graduating from MHS, Tinian and Rota high schools. It will be a week of celebration for these students who have persevered attendance at school. Having successfully fulfilled the requirements for a high school diploma, they are ready to march into the real world and demand a job. Congratulations to them. But what really lies ahead for them with only a high school diploma?

Past history tells us that in the CNMI about 20% of each year’s graduating class goes to college and the remainder 80% get jobs. In the past most of them have been quickly absorbed in the government and hibernate there until the required 20 years is up awaiting their retirement. The few without connections into the government sanctuary wander into the private section taking any meager job available. Something is amiss when a community in desperate need of skilled and literate employees continues to allow this to happen. As a result we continue to rely on nonresident workers.

My first reaction to this problem is to say that it is the parents’ responsibility, but then I remember that most of the parents are working for the government and have had a safe niche for years filled with ample perks and automatic payraises. So why encourage the child to wander off into unknown and dangerous territory such as going off to college and getting a degree. It is a sure and smooth road to simply slide into government work and wade through life. But the tide is changing and the weather is getting rough. There are no current government positions open. There are few good private sector opportunities without a college degree.

To stay competitive employers neecl workers who can read, write, compute, solve problems, and communicate well. Here are few hard facts that the young student will be facing. Workers with only a high school diploma earn a mean monthly income of $904, compared to $1,829 for those with a bachelor’s degree. This equates to a yearly income of $10,848 for a high school degree versus $21,948 for a college degree–a difference of $11,100 annually. Multiply this by ten years and you have a small fortune of an additional income of $111,000 for simply having a college degree.

Employees with low communication and computation skills are the first to be let go when business is bad. Too many of our young people have n0t developed tile necessary skills to compete for the good jobs unless they continue their education by going to college.

For some strange reason the parents of these young graduating students and the rest of the community still do not realize that the growth of our islands depends upon the quality of its educated citizens. We cannot keep allowing young untrained minds to simply wander into government jobs with its security blanket or get lost in the maze of the private sector. We need educated young people to lead the CNMI into the 21th Century.

In the United States the national average for seniors going on to higher education is about 65%, over three times our low 20%. Where are we going wrong?

I am happy that out of about 300 seniors, 60 of them will go on to college. But I feel sad that 240 of them will become disillusioned when they find the doors to government employment closed. Reality will smack them in the faee when they get turned down for jobs in the private sector that require skills which they lack.

Let us stop lulling our youth into believing that higher educational skills are not needed for a good job. Without a college degree today opportunities are extremely limited.