Free Secondary Education What parents do not want their kids to have it better than they did? The way to the middle class is even harder to obtain today. The old way to the middle class was a high school degree and a factory job. In the new flat world with outsourcing these jobs are no more. The new way to the middle class is a secondary education, and that costs lots of money. Even though free community college would cost US taxpayers 65 billion dollars in 10 years, it would make college education more accessible than ever before. We should also consider free vocational school. With education becoming free and more accessible, this would not only help the ambition gap, but also the gap at the bottom, and the gap at the top. Filling all of …show more content…
Dana Goldstein a journalist from The Nation says that, “47 million American jobs are expected to be created between now and 2018, and about two-thirds will require some sort of education beyond high school.” In making this comment, Goldstein is showing us that the only way to be prosperous in the future is to educate our children. Goldstein goes on to say that, “27 percent of workers with occupational licenses earn more than the average recipient of a bachelor’s degree.” In other words, Goldstein is trying to tell us that a bachelor 's degree isn 't the only way to go and that we need to increase funding for vocational schools and community …show more content…
According to Friedman, the gap at the bottom is described as “the wealthiest school districts attract the best teachers, principals, and curriculum planners, along with the most demanding parents and PTAs, while the poorest districts attract the weakest teachers, principals, and parents”(360). So poor communities get poor schools and rich communities get rich and nice schools. The result of this is the poor kids stay poor and the rich kids stay rich. There is no way to the middle class; it 's programmed into them since kindergarten. The belief is that college is too expensive and children need to stay close and help the family out. With free college or vocational school, people who otherwise thought college was unobtainable now see a college education as an option. Many people think lower socioeconomic kids aren 't ready for college because their high school doesn 't prepare them. That 's the point of the vocational schools. Not all people learn the same or want to study the same things. The vocational path offers another way to learn and still be able to make it to the middle
Everyone knows that person from high school that just wasn’t cut out for college. It’s not a bad thing by any means, but if you’re thinking about heading off to college like many American teenagers often do, think about this: going to college can be a waste of both your time and your money. I’m not the first to say it, and I sure as hell won’t be the last. In Stephanie Owen and Isabel Sawhill’s essay, Should Everyone Go to College?, the two authors take a strong economic approach to justify going to college. Owen, an ex- senior research assistant at Brookings’ Center on Children and Families and current research associate at the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan center for research on the problems of urban communities, and Sawhill, the co-director of the Center on Children and Families and a senior fellow in economic studies at Brookings, claim that the return on investment (ROI) of a college education is overwhelmingly positive on average; However, they also bring light
There's too much debt for the middle class to even think about getting ahead. If the middle class doesn't have as much money as the uppe class, they won't get the same education as them simply because they don't want to be in debt. What interested me the most was when the writer said "They're not trying to get ahead. They're just trying to get to zero." It interested me because it's true, especially in the present. And the middle class can't can't out of debt because they can't seem to find jobs; figuritively speaking, they're in a hole that's too deep to climb out of without help.
While reading this textbook They Say, I Say, I preferred the Should Everyone Go to College?. Choosing this essay since it caught my attention. Acquiring an education is compelling it is also a smart investment. Obtaining a bachelor's degree can motivate thou toward becoming prosperous among the right profession. In a recent study, researchers determined that college grads amidst a bachelor's degree earn a higher salary correlated to individuals amidst a high school diploma. Therefore, statistics concluded that a college that is competitive receive a substantial return on investments of a bachelor's degree by institution type. Depending upon which field, thou decide as a career path and how many years of education it requires in acquiring a
The choice of whether or not one should attend college has been a great topic of interest over the past few years with the increase of college tuition. This increase of college tuition questions whether attending college will pay off in the future since numerous amounts of students are left with an excessive amount of student loan debt. Stephanie Owen, a former research assistant at Brooking’s Center and current research associate at the Urban Institute, alongside Isabell Sawhill, co-director of the Center on Children and Families and a senior fellow in economic studies at Brookings, wrote Should Everyone Go to College? In an attempt to answer that question. In their report they breakdown the cost and benefits of going to college often relying
Students from richer upbringings are given more resources to ensure advancement in their academic career. “The Reproduction of Privilege” article states “... high school students from the upper start of middle class perform better on SAT and ACT tests than those from poor working class.” The upper strata students mentioned have the financial capabilities to pay for academic tutors, including SAT and ACT, and receive the necessary extra help. Moreover, as mentioned earlier, students from higher economic classes are also able to get assistance from their parents, who, most likely, have received a collegiate degree or higher. Furthermore, in terms of opportunities, richer students are more capable of securing a job, as teens, than their lower income counterparts. In the Harvard Graduate School of Education study, “Pathway to Prosperity” the author states “U.S employers complain that today’s young adults are not equipped with the skills they need to succeed…” Since America’s current secondary education tends to focus solely on college readiness, rather than essential workforce skills, many employers believe that young people aren 't equipped to enter the labor pool. However, the study also note that, as of 2010, white affluent teens make up 40.7% of employed teenagers. This fact is most likely a reflection of their parents economic and educational background. The higher one’s economic class and educational attainment, the more extensive that individual’s network. Since the teens mentioned come from an affluent environment, they have the capability to obtain connections through their parents, which ultimately allows them to receive the previously mentioned jobs and
Before entering into defense of the argument, it is important to communicate that the current situation is one which demands reform. It must be understood that the state of the public school system is not simply confined to the domain of education but is instead very much interrelated with the distribution of wealth. The current opportunity gap-which affords those who are middle and upper class greater access to higher quality education-is the cause of the inequality seen in the distribution of income. “Children born into the top fifth of the income distribution have about twice as much of a chance of becoming middle class or better in their adult years as those born into the bottom fifth (Isaacs, Sawhill, & Haskins, 2008)”.
Imagine living in tall two story mansion with the best furniture and toys money can buy, and then imagine living in a small cramped room with barely enough money to keep the electricity running. The difference between these two situations is that one is living in comfort, and the other is living in poverty. Money greatly affects , money doesn’t always affect the way a child learns, but in the articles “Inequality in the American Education System” by William H. Schmidt and “Inequality in Education” by Kevin D. Williamson. These articles show how much money affects the education in America, without money most students living in poverty will not be able to make it far in life. While those with money will most likely become the future generation of businessmen and doctors. Thus, as long as social inequality continues to thrive inside of our education system the education students receive will not be equal - instead we should provide the same education for both the
Caroline Bird gathered her own data by lecturing on college campuses and questioned professors and administrators (Par 2). Her article is intended for college students and the general public in the 1970s. In 1969, 80 percent of college students thought education was important and two years later the percent went down to 74 percent (Bird Par 17). “44 percent of Americans now believe that getting a college education is ‘very important’” (Valerie Strauss). This is a shocking number that students are thinking less and less of education. Bird claims that college increases the wealth gap and research proves it. According to Aimee Picchi, the wealth gap continues to increase because fewer lower class families can afford college. Bird agrees that college tuition is helping the growth of the wealth gap (Par 23). As student loans continues to increase, it becomes unrealistic to afford college and by not receiving a higher education that narrows the job field and the salary (Valerie Strauss). The 1970s was full of history: the Vietnam War was just ending, President Nixon Resigns and the country entered an economic slump. Jobs were not circulating as well as they are now. Having a college degree back in the 1970s, it was difficult to find a job after graduating it is still true today. The millennial generation makes up about 40 percent of the unemployed in the U.S. today (Leah M.Goodman). A lot has
Ten out of seven students in America go to college. Six out of seven of those students won't be able to pay their debt off even until the age of 50, isn't that shocking? High school students should already know their career and start pursuing it in high school instead of in college, because most students are clueless with what they want to do for a career. Middle school needs to be teaching students on all the life careers out there and help students find what fits them. Colleges are setting up student with the wrong mind-sets.
“A typical college graduate earns an estimated $650,000 over a work life than a high school graduate” (Rosentiel). This amount of money is influential to not only the lives of the graduates, but also their children who will then be able to afford to go to college, and since it is such a financial benefit, post-secondary education should not be so expensive. Having that much more money in a lifetime helps the privileged and their children stay privileged and the unprivileged stay unprivileged, creating and sustaining a large wealth gap. “...when more men (and a few women) were going to college, many of them in preparation for their future high-earning careers, or simply because it was becoming more normal. Why, the reasoning went, shouldn’t they pay more” (Rothman)? Going to college was becoming more normal, so anyone who wanted to thrive in a competitive market had attend, but college was also becoming unaffordable because colleges raised their prices. Making college more expensive keeps many low-income people unable to become successful because they would not be able to enroll in college since they could not, at the moment, afford it. Seeing college as an essential but pricing it as a luxury perpetuates an already destructive wealth gap in American
“More than one-third of the adult population in the United States has a bachelor’s degree or higher marking the first time in decades of data (Bureau).” However, the underemployment and unemployment rate is proving to devalue a college education. A college degree doesn't mean as much as it used to because more and more people keep getting college degrees, a degree no longer guarantees a job, and often experience supersedes education.
Secondary school understudies are informed that they won't be fruitful in life unless they go to college or university. However, things had changed consistently. We are turning out far more school graduates than the whole of employments in the moderately lucrative administrative, specialized and proficient jobs that truly were the place school graduates took employments. Ostensibly, we are over-put resources into advanced education. “A bar wanting to hire a bartender may get 15 applications, three from college graduates, and to reduce the costs associated with determining which potential employee will be a more ideal hire, it simply limits the search to those with a college degree or more...”(Vedder 5). We are taking part in accreditation expansion, where individuals go to college forever years essentially to land a chance at positions for which quite a bit of that instruction is
There are two types of jobs that traditionally require a degree of higher education and are distinguished as middle-skill and high-skill jobs. Although employment among high-skill jobs remain steady, the employment in blue collar jobs continue to dwindle as there is not enough workers in demand to fill the empty positions. A few examples of middle-skills jobs would include an electrician, plumber, and maybe even a dental hygienist. For those that do undertake the training needed for blue-collar occupation there are several benefits to it such as on the site job training. According to Selingo, as middle-skill jobs are faced with a skills gap this led to employers providing students with “both the academic education needed to succeed in today’s work force and the specific hands-on skills to get a job in their companies” (Selingo). Not only are workers exposed to the training they need, but the starting salary for some middle-skill jobs can well reach close towards the six figures which can be as high as some jobs that would have required a Bachelor’s degree. On the other end, are white collar workers who would have a four year degree or higher which would include doctors, lawyers, teachers, and engineers. Not surprisingly, that the Bureau of Labor Statistics states in their report, “Projected Rate of Change by Major Occupational Group,” of the low unemployment rate that those with a Bachelor’s degree or higher have as well as median earnings
The main issue of this article is the number of jobless people in the United States. Unemployment is a huge issue in our society today, which is why Schwartz focuses his research mainly on this topic. Due to this rising issue, many other problems branch off of it, which result in unemployment being one of the largest current macroeconomic issues. Overall spending is effected by unemployment. The more people unemployed means less people paying taxes or even having money for spending. When increases of workers aren’t involved in the economy the GDP reduces and moves the country away from resources. With unemployment comes a competitive work field. A college education is key for majority of jobs today. According to the article most positions are going to college graduates with specialized skills. The unemployment rate for college graduates is at 3.4 percent compared to 6.3 percent for high school graduates. The article explains that even a four year bachelor’s degree doesn’t secure you a job anymore. Many students are considering bachelor degrees or additional cl...
Life is gold, why not enjoyed while we can? But can we really enjoy without an education, a certificate or a degree? In the article titled "The New Liberal Arts,” author Sanford J. Ungar says that vocational education leaves out training in areas that students will need to succeed. According to Ungar, "The career education bandwagon seems to suggest that short cuts are available to students that lead directly to high-paying jobs--leaving out 'frills ' like learning how to write and speak well” (191 ). Schools promote different things to catch the attention of students; however, it’s not about what the schools are promoting but the actual education acquired at the end. Although vocational