College vs. High School Comparison

¶ … College vs. High school

Comparison & Contrast: College vs. High School

The enrichment of one's intellect is a universal need that is an inherent part of an individual's path to personal development. Because of the universal need to be recognized and to satisfy the need to be intellectually stimulated, human society considers it essential to go through the tradition of achieving formal education. This then led to the norm of attending school every year, a 'tradition' that has dominated people's lives through their lifetimes. In formal education, an individual goes through different stages, wherein each stage gets progressively more difficult, or at the very least, challenging to the learning individual. As expected, there are stark differences between each stage because of the progressive levels of learning difficulty or complexity of education that the student will receive. One of the critical stages in the achievement of formal education is the one's transition from being a high school to a college student. This transition stage brings about both similarities and differences between high school and college education. The discussions that follow highlight these similarities and differences between high school and college education.

One similarity between high school and college education is that both stages in formal education are still part of the system and tradition of learning through a classroom setting. While this may not be true for all college classes, especially those that subsist to alternative learning methods, formal learning through the classroom setting remains the dominant structure for majority of the colleges in the country. College may mean a change in the level of difficulty or complexity of areas to be studied, but this stage still subsists to the formal education system, which recommends a classroom setting as the preferred set-upfor teacher-student interaction and learning. Another similarity between the two stages of formal education is that both high school and college create the psyche of 'moving towards the future.' That is, as early as high school, students are already motivated to think about their future, to reflect and discern what professional career they would like to eventually pursue. This is accomplished in two ways, both with the intent to pursue a professional career in the future. In high school, the student chooses the course that s/he will take in college, which would reflect his/her choice of a professional career. And in college, the course and academic track that the student pursues, in addition to his/her choice of job and potential employer, remain consistent (ideally) with the goal to eventually become what the student aspired to be in high school.