Introduction
America faces a serious higher education problem. More people are going to college than ever before, yet there is a lack of highly skilled workers. Students are graduating with a wealth of information yet have few real world skills and a mountain of debt to show for their efforts. A recent report from Mcinsey in conjuction with chegg.com found “Employers fret that too many college graduates arrive on the job without having acquired the skills and habits to succeed in the workplace.” Another study from researchers at Georgetown University shows that the economy will face a shortage of 5 million workers with the necessary education and training by 2020. Meanwhile, the rising cost of college and the debt many students and families are expected to incur are raising questions in some quarters about the value of college as an investment, even as critics take aim at the cost structures and traditional practices of colleges and universities in general. The education system needs to be overhauled to remove many of the general education requirements that currently burden students.
historical backround
The history of american colleges colleges has two parts. According to noted historian David Katz “early american college were more a place where one learned to become a gentleman, than a place of learning.” In fact Benjamin franklin reported that in his youth Harvard had already become a rich mans school, a place where wealthy parents sent their sons to learn nothing more than the social skills of gentlemen (Lucas 1994, p. 109). Due to these non acedemic goals, college consisted mostly of latin, hebrew, history and perhaps a little math. Little thought was put into things of actual relevance to a persons future. Students we...
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...ff Strohl Recovery:Projections of Jobs and Education Requirements Through 2020 Georgetown Public Policy Institute june 2013 http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/Recovery2020.FR.Web.pdf
Voice of the graduate Mckinsey and company May 2013 http://mckinseyonsociety.com/downloads/reports/Education/UXC001%20Voice%20of%20the%20Graduate%20v7.pdf
Christopher Lucas, American Higher Education: A history Palgrave Macmillan 1994
Peter Lattman, Obama Says Law School Should be Two, Not Three Years The New York Times Aug 23 2013
Lomar Alexander, Why College Shouldn't Take Four Years Newsweek 10/16/09
Doug Leterman, Politicians Praise and Pressure Colleges, Inside Higher Ed, 2/10/09
Mitt Romney, No Apology: The Case for American Greatness St Martins Press 2010
George Kellner, Higher Education and the New society,The Johns Hopkins University Press 2007
Bruni begins by describing the golden promise of college as it appeared for baby boomers. In that time getting into college and completing a degree was enough to be successful. He acknowledges that this idealized vision of college may be inaccurate, however, he asserts that the issue is far more “complicated” than it once was. Bruni makes use of a recent (2012) debate over student loan interest rates in the U.S. to explore the issues surrounding college education today. While rising student debt is certainly part of the problem he suggests that the issue extends beyond that. College is now a “luxury item with newly uncertain returns” (Bruni). While rising costs make college a luxury item that not everyone will be able to afford, even those who can and do manage to go to college are not guaranteed success.
The greatest country in the world still has problems evenly distributing education to its youth. The articles I have read for this unit have a common theme regarding our education system. The authors illustrate to the reader about the struggles in America concerning how we obtain and education. Oppression, politics, racism, and socioeconomic status are a few examples of what is wrong with our country and its means of delivering a fair education to all Americans.
A child’s first day of school is often viewed as a rite of passage; the first step on the road to a happy and successful life. This is true for most children from affluent families who live in the best school districts or can afford expensive private schools. But what if a child’s first day of school is nothing more than the first step on the road to poverty and possibly even illiteracy? The documentary Waiting for “Superman” addresses many issues in a failing school system and the innocent children that system leaves behind. Although the documentary spends little time suggesting parents’ roles in their children’s education, it clearly shows that we must make changes to help children from low-income families and improve the teacher’s unions.
College education also does a large of things for college students, these things can be both counted and not counted. Delbanco wrote about this when he wrote “The best reason to care about college – who goes,.... is not what it does for society in economic terms but what it can do for individuals, in both calculable and incalculable ways”(Delbanco 507). In the article Delbanco writes about what one of the alumni at one of his talks said to him afterwards. He writes about the experience of this alumni in his article when he writes “Not only had a college education enriched his capacity to read demanding works of literature and to grasp fundamental political ideas, it had also heightened and deepened his alertness to color and form, melody and harmony...Such an education is a hedge against utilitarian values”(Delbanco 508). Delbanco also wrote how college education has maintained the same in some ways for many years. He writes “The tradition of liberal learning survived and thrived throughout European history but remained largely the possession of ruling elites. The distinctive American contribution has been the attempt to democratize it, to deploy it on behalf of things cardinal American principle that all persons, regardless of origin, have the to pursue happiness… is helpful to that pursuit. Educated can be characterized as “snobbish and narrow”, but that is not
For the past decade, The United States has stressed the importance of college education, to those seeking employment, and better careers. For most people, college is the logical next step in education, as it provides a working knowledge of a desired field and opens the door to many opportunities, but college has become increasingly more expensive as time goes on. Many people feel that college is no longer an option financially. Even with financial aid and scholarships, the cost of a college education can still be very taxing. This is due to massive price increase across the boards, but the main issue on most people’s minds is the debt that will be acquired from higher education.
Something I have always known since I was a little kid is that the educational system in this country is a complete fraud. American schools claim to live by the ideal of No Child Left Behind, but millions of students get cast aside each and every year. In schools these days, it is obvious which students are the elite—those that are raised up and motivated to go to college—and the ordinary student— those that are somewhat ignored throughout their schooling and are lucky if they even earn a GED. As a recent graduate of high school, and a product of this country’s educational system, I have had the opportunity to develop my own opinions regarding the myth of education in our society. Based upon my observations going through the school system, and the various arguments posed by several authors in “Rereading America”, I strongly believe that schooling in this society caters solely to students in the elite category while ostracizing students that do not live up to the elitist ideal.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, college tuition and relevant fees have increased by 893 percent (“College costs and the CPI”). 893 percent is a very daunting percentage considering that it has surpassed the rise in the costs of Medicare, food, and housing. As America is trying to pull out of a recession, many students are looking for higher education so they can attain a gratified job. However, their vision is being stained by the dreadful rise in college costs. College tuition is rising beyond inflation. Such an immense rise in tuition has many serious implications for students; for example, fewer students are attending private colleges, fewer students are staying enrolled in college, and fewer students are working in the fields in which they majored in.
backgrounds, is greater than ever, access and opportunity in American higher education is more complex and a lot less optimistic. Also, the majority of jobs requiring a college education doubled over the past 40 years (Carnevale, Smith, Strohl, 2010). While half of all people from high-income families have a bachelor’s degree by age 25, just
The second chapter of this book advocates students to attend college, even if they must take on a moderate amount of student loan debt. They give statistics showing the tremendous gap in wages between a college graduate and a non-college graduate. The third chapter of this book argues the opposite viewpoint of the second chapter. The author states that the cost of college today is too high and that there are too many college graduates flooding the job market causing many of them to go unemployed or seek low level jobs that do not pay enough to pay off their student loans. Both of these chapters will help me to show the two main ...
Everyone knows that going to college and getting a degree is the most effective and guaranteed route to ensure a prosperous financial future, right? College is considered by most to be the best investment you can make in life, but what happens when that investment leaves you drowning in thousands of dollars in debt right after graduation day. This is the situation that millions of college graduates are faced with in 2016. Rising college tuition perpetuates student debt and is on a sharp incline and it seems to have no ambition of ever slowing down. The effect of this catastrophe is felt by millions of families across the country who now question, “is college really worth it?”
Throughout the years, America has always debated whether education is needed- if it helps people succeed or not. The argument in the past was always over high school education, which is now mandatory. That decision has helped the US rise economically and industrially. Today, the US is in the middle of the same debate- this time, over college. Some, like David Leonhardt, a columnist for the business section of The New York Times, think a college education creates success in any job. Others, such as Christopher Beha, an author and assistant editor of Harper’s Magazine, believe that some college “education” (like that of for-profit schools) is a waste of time, and can even be harmful to students. Each stance on this argument has truth to it, and there is no simple answer to this rising issue in an ever changing nation full of unique people. Any final decision would affect the United States in all factions- especially economically and socially. However, despite the many arguments against college, there is overwhelming proof that college is good for all students, academically or not.
Imagine telling a student who just graduated from college that you have wasted four years of hard, stressful and even worse, expensive work. Unfortunately, in this cynical society today, the world isn’t just full of competitors, but it’s full of greedy money-grabbing businesses. The worst businesses aren’t manufacturing or electric companies, but colleges and universities. In Caroline Bird’s essay “College is a Waste of Time and Money,” she examines how college has been viewed for so long as the best place to send high school grads no matter whether they actually want to go or not. She adds that students don’t realize how much college costs and are wasting their parents time and money, which is especially a horrible thing to waste. Now that the economy is better since September 11th and states have been stabilizing their budget debts, it doesn’t make sense that tuition prices higher than ever for college students.
Although a college education grows more and more expensive every year. People begin to question whether college is a good idea to invest in or not. “As college costs continue to rise, students and their families are looking more carefully at what they are getting for their money. Increasingly, they are finding that the college experience falls short of their expectations”(Cooper. H Mary). Many people believe that the cost of a college degree has outstripped the value of a degree.Studies show that a college degree will increase your earning power. A lot of people say that a college degree now is worth what a high school diploma was wor...
In Caroline Bird’s “College is A Waste of Time and Money”, it’s argued that there are many college students who would be better off if they were to begin working after high school graduation. Colleges and universities can no longer ensure that one will go on to get a better job, getting paid more than they would have without a higher education. However, high school seniors still stress about where they will be attending college, how they’re going to pay for it and what they’re going to study for the next four years. Bird points out how college has changed over the past few decades and how, in turn, it has set many young adults up for disappointment, if nothing else.
The ability to gain a degree in any field of study is highly important in American society, possessing skills and knowledge over your job emphasizes the significance of higher education. Especially, for job promotions that would cause someone to make more than their fellow colleagues. In our increasingly competitive economic society, having the minimal of a high school diploma is not enough to provide financial stability nor will it help to compete in a workforce in which the best-educated are the ones that are rewarded the most. Therefore, higher education is a crucial necessity in order to move up the socioeconomic ladder and qualify for higher paying jobs. The rising costs of college, however, is making it harder for Americans to obtain