I wish to address an open letter to all the individuals who are opposed to higher education, those who believe that it does not bring sufficient returns on investment and think that the only measure of an individual's value revolves around this person's material wealth. I also wish to address this letter to all those who might be on the fence about whether they should get a college education, partly because of the opponents' vigorous and continuously broadcast complaints, and partly because their high-school education certainly didn't fill them with sufficient excitement or thirst for knowledge. To you, to all, I address this message in which I believe wholeheartedly.

College is about learning to enjoy the simplest things, and aspiring to achieve the greatest things. We, as humans, have this ability to ever pursue greater, more grandiose goals, never truly appreciating the feeling of definite satisfaction. Thus, spending 44 years instead of a mere 40 producing wealth will certainly not quench the thirst for more earnings, more wealth which we will almost certainly be feeling at the end of the road. Many studies have been published noting the stark contrast between college graduates' earnings and non-graduates' earnings, as well as a risk of unemployment that remains significant for the former group. No society has yet demonstrated a perfectly well oiled system, and giving up on their education certainly would not have opened a job spot to these unemployed college graduates. In light of these ubiquitous issues, let us, if only for a moment, contemplate things from a distance and awe at the raw wonders of a college education.

Consider the following situation: someone is facing a gigantic waterfall, watching the uncountable water molecules gain in velocity as they pursue their inevitable descent, feeling the blow of the wind concurrently with the sweet spray of cold water. What is going through that person's mind? How exactly is he or she experiencing the moment? A physicist will wonder at the multiple immutable laws that harmonically coexist to give birth to the scenery before him. A biologist will readily decipher the complexity of the ecosystem that he is facing. A chemist will serenely contemplate the dance of elements, thinking about the scene taking place at the microscopic scope as the macroscopic festival resumes, uninterrupted. An artist will adopt a drastically different approach, carefully following the splendid patterns and shapes that sum up to form the scenery, wishing he could paint it, recount it, share it. All in all, they will all consider the waterfall from a specialist's perspective; their minds will race and their faces will lighten up as time slows down and everything else vanishes for the instant of a thought.

A higher education's true purpose is first and foremost to transform an individual's vision of the world. That is, the specialization one is to acquire through his or her investigation in one or multiple fields of interest will permanently shape this very person's internal interpretation of any external event. These brief instants of connection to any field of human intellectual endeavor, this symbiosis with the intangible yet infinitely layered kingdom that is knowledge, can only be obtained through higher education. Furthermore, they all if anything constitute opportunities to explore one more facet of this fascinatingly complex existence, to enjoy a customized ride through life's pandemonium. Are a few more years of hypothetical salary and a precocious experience of the harsh reality truly worth abandoning what might very well be the most accomplished transformative experience that our kind has managed to establish through the millennia? Absolutely not.

There will never be enough time to work. Four more years within the industry might make an infinitesimal difference, but the latter pales in comparison to the benefits four years of continuous intellectual exposure and detachment from this world's enthralling madness provide. Becoming aware of the complexity of our surroundings, feasting from the wealth of mankind's intergenerational wisdom, transcending objective reality by adopting a specialist's sensibility: all are the results of a college education. None results from monetary considerations.