Justification for Higher Education
Chris Harrison
Writing 39B, Assignment 1
5 February 2003
Justification For Higher Education After analyzing William A. Henry III s In Defense of Elitism and Caroline Bird s
College is a Waste of Time and Money , it is clear that Henry s argument concerning the purpose of an education is more rational than Bird s due to the fact that Henry supports his claims with credible statistics, logical insight, and uses current real world scenarios. Bird, on the contrary, bases her argument solely on manipulated statistics, overly dramatic claims, and ridiculously out-of-this-world scenarios. While there are various viewpoints and perspectives on the subject of higher education,
Henry for one, has landed the conclusion that in America higher education for the masses has not only been extremely costly economically, but it has also greatly lowered the educational standards and therefore defeated the purpose of higher education itself. Henry s primary grievance against higher education for the masses is that the influx of mediocrities relentlessly lowers the general standards at colleges to levels the weak ones can meet (335). Quite simply, higher education is by no means any higher if the standards keep lowering just so some students can barely meet the minimum standards. For example, although I am a full supporter of the bell curve in college, it is certain that this recent innovation has had its share in lowering the university s educational standards. This practice of calculating the students average score on an exam and then re-scaling grades to help those who didn t fare as well is a clear example of bringing the standard of college down to everyone s level (336). I can certainly attest to this claim because I was recently directly affected by the bell curve. In the first quarter of my freshman year, I received a score of 44 out of a possible 100 points on my Physics 7A final exam. According to the general 10% increment grading scale, this would
Writing 39B, Assignment 1
5 February 2003
Justification For Higher Education After analyzing William A. Henry III s In Defense of Elitism and Caroline Bird s
College is a Waste of Time and Money , it is clear that Henry s argument concerning the purpose of an education is more rational than Bird s due to the fact that Henry supports his claims with credible statistics, logical insight, and uses current real world scenarios. Bird, on the contrary, bases her argument solely on manipulated statistics, overly dramatic claims, and ridiculously out-of-this-world scenarios. While there are various viewpoints and perspectives on the subject of higher education,
Henry for one, has landed the conclusion that in America higher education for the masses has not only been extremely costly economically, but it has also greatly lowered the educational standards and therefore defeated the purpose of higher education itself. Henry s primary grievance against higher education for the masses is that the influx of mediocrities relentlessly lowers the general standards at colleges to levels the weak ones can meet (335). Quite simply, higher education is by no means any higher if the standards keep lowering just so some students can barely meet the minimum standards. For example, although I am a full supporter of the bell curve in college, it is certain that this recent innovation has had its share in lowering the university s educational standards. This practice of calculating the students average score on an exam and then re-scaling grades to help those who didn t fare as well is a clear example of bringing the standard of college down to everyone s level (336). I can certainly attest to this claim because I was recently directly affected by the bell curve. In the first quarter of my freshman year, I received a score of 44 out of a possible 100 points on my Physics 7A final exam. According to the general 10% increment grading scale, this would