This may be too late but I will give some pointers. There are a few spelling and grammar problems, and a few sentences that I think need better style.
The last sentence of the second paragraph needs a period.
There is an inconsistency in paragraph spacing; Paragraphs one, two, and three have an extra line between them, but paragraphs three, four, and five have no space (unless I misinterpret a fourth paragraph; in that case there is only one missing extra line). Word can take care of this for you if you highlight everything (CTRL + A), choose Format > Paragraph..., and in the "Spacing" area choose your font size in the "After" field. From that point on, every time you hit Enter you will be in a new paragraph with extra space automatically added. (This is a picky Word usage thing but technically the only time you should ever hit Enter is to start a new paragraph; styles should be used for formatting.)
Some spelling errors got past the spellchecker:
17% more that someone
my up bringing that
("upbringing" is one word)
High School Diploma
should not be capitalized.
(Karlgaard, R. �Is College Worth It.� 2006)
This citation has no trailing period.
This sentence:
Earning a college degree has been a natural decision since I can remember
is pretty poor grammar due to the "since I can remember" part which is not formed well; a better structure would be "For my entire life, I never questioned whether I should earn a college degree." or something along that line.
This reads kind of awkward:
I hold tight to the belief that it is what I want and should do
and should be rephrased to something more like "I continue to believe that the correct choice is to obtain a college degree."
The average student spends 5.2 years to earn a bachelor degree and costs average $60,000 at a public university. Bill Gates, Steven Spielberg, William Faulkner, Quentin Tarentino, Walt Disney, Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison, and John D. Rockefeller all found great success without a college degree
Depending on how strict your teacher is, these statements could use a citation.
Your second paragraph's font changes; when you pasted the quote it took the style of wherever you copied it from so you will want to fix that.
On page 2:
earn an associates degree than
double-check to make sure "associates" should not be "associate's"; I'm not quite certain but I believe it is supposed to be possessive. I'm more certain of this because:
The value of a bachelors degree has been on the rise
was tagged as incorrect by my version of Word; it suggested "bachelor's". Also, you are inconsistent with capitalization of "bachelor's"; it should always be lowercase (associate's as well, but I didn't catch any inconsistencies in that). This is correct according to
this page.
The value of a degree is still high, but without adaptability, ambition, and expertise it can still lead to a low-end career.
This is an awesome final sentence for this essay. I don't think you have enough on that third page to make it count; perhaps if you could flesh out your previous paragraphs with a few more sentences to support this concluding sentence you could make 5-8 more lines out of it and a more convincing argument for a length of 3 pages.
Grammar check warns me of passive voice in several sentences but I have an embarrassing disclosure to make: I have never fully understood what the devil passive voice is but somehow managed to train myself to never use passive voice in my essays, or my teachers were too lazy to spot it when I did use passive voice.
Other than some style and rough-draft errors I believe the paper is good for the topic and requirements. "Opinion" type essays are always tough to write because it seems to me most of the formal writing style rules prevent structures that are required for opinion essays that don't sound pretentious. The points are clear and the conclusion is on the money, I just think the essay needs a few more sentences driving home the point that a person's motivation is more important than the papers they carry.