English Assignment on Education

Choose to be Better Off In her recent work, A Lifetime of Student Debt? Not Likely, Robin Wilson claims that “Despite stories of a large number of students who face debt, a third of graduates leave college with no debt at all for their education” (257). In other words, Wilson states that most people borrow a reasonable amount of money, they pay it back, and they are better off for having gone to college. Even in this economy, college graduates are much better off than high-school graduates. On the contrary, many people are considering student-loan borrowing to be a national crisis. Some even argue that student-loan borrowing is threatening the financial future of today’s college students. More often, the problem among students who go heavily into debt is that they are determined to attend their dream college, no matter the cost. Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid, claims that “People don’t pay attention to the debt. They want to be able to pay for the school they have wanted to go to for as long as they can remember, and they are willing to do whatever it takes” (258). In other words, people live outside their means. In response to those who claim student loans are “A Life Sentence,” Anthony Carnevale, director of Georgetown University’s Center, stated, “Debt is the best way to pay for education because you’re shifting the cost forward until you’ll be earning more money” (260). Carnevale’s point is that college graduates earn about 80 percent more a year than high-school graduates do. A college graduate can expect to earn nearly one million more in lifetime earnings than a high-school graduate can. In the article, Are Colleges Worth the Price of Admission? Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus agree with Wilson when they state, “ Nearly 82 percent of college graduates found full-time employment within a year” (188). In other words, Hacker, Dreifus, and Wilson all agree that college is a conservative approach to being successful in life. In the YouTube video,

Cited: Wilson, Robin. “A Lifetime of Student Debt? Not likely.” They Say/I Say: The Moves That Matter In Academic Writing. By Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein. 2nd edition. New York: W.W. Norton, & 2012. 256-273. Print. Hacker, Andrew. Dreifus, Cluadia. “Are Colleges Worth the Price of Admission?” They Say/ I Say: The Moves That Matter In Academic Writing. By Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein. 2nd edition. New York: W.W. Norton, & 2012. 179-189. Print. Robinson, Ken. “Changing Education Paradigms.” RSAnimate. TED.Com, Dec. 2010. Web. 25 Oct. 2012.