In The Overachievers, written by Alexandra Robbins, the speaker is the New York Times bestseller author herself, who is known in the expertise of being a successful journalist and author, telling the stories of overachieving students and the stressful hardships they experience along with their frustrating journey as they transition into the college atmosphere. Robbins would have the authority as the writer on the subject of the lives of overachieving students because she was once a student that attended Walt Whitman High…
In Marty Nemko’s article, “We Send Too Many Students to College,” he analyzes and questions whether college is truly worth the money. Marty “holds a Ph.D. specializing in the evaluation of education from the University of California, Berkeley, and subsequently taught there” (martynemko.com) as well as published five successful books. In addition to his novels, he previously was a columnist at San Francisco Chronical and The Atlantic Monthly, also a contributing editor at several other well-known companies. Nemko’s purpose is to convey the idea that, even though there may be reasons one would attend college, the complications overshadow the benefits. He adopts an impassionate tone in order to convince his adult audience to take a hard look at whether it is worthwhile for their children to attend college.…
First, when I look at the authors push to get an education I see in Richard Rodriguez’s essay that he was very motivated. He started as a young boy with an accent striving to learn more and attain knowledge whenever he could because he knew of the benefits. In the story Rodriguez says that he shifted away from family life to study more and learn more from his teachers. He wanted school rather than his uneducated family. In contrast, Mike Rose clearly didn’t want to be in school, he wanted an easy way out of things. Rose explains he was put in vocational classes by accident, but decided to stay in the classes with the lower level students. He explains how the teachers could care less about the student’s education which affected Rose because he saw himself and everyone as being average.…
He talks specifically about the “buyer’s market” known as college, and how its recent changes now “serve . . . the students” (14). Similarly to his previous section, logos is apparent here, more so than any other rhetoric appeal. His claim that universities are “customer driven” in order to survive in an “ever more competitive market” is his main point, and he shapes this claim based on the evidence of not only America’s history and the expansion of its universities, but also how the universities and even departments are collapsing to the whims of the students and their tuition-paying parents (12). Universities have begun to appeal to students not by offering them a thought-provoking and stimulating education and proposing to them what sort of people they will shape out of those willing to learn, but by enticing students with the promise of the fun social activities they will have available to them once they are released from their boring…
In this essay that came from Caroline Bird’s book “The Case Against College”, she claims that most students that are in school not because they want to be, but because it is now the thing to do or to get away from their parents. (Bird 647) She also goes on to say a little later essay that she notices when she goes on campus that the students look sad. She says, “I have been overwhelmed by the prevailing sadness on American campuses”. (Bird 469) Birds has very good arguments, from how expensive college is, why a lot of students fail out of class, to letting high school graduates make up their minds on whether or not they want to go to college or not.…
In the article by Charles Murray, “Are Too Many People Going to College?”, Murray raises interesting and controversial topics. Murray is suggesting that maybe school counselors should not encourage every student to attend a four year university for their B.A.. Instead that they should only encourage those students that are in the correct percentile in linguistics and that their career goals require them to do so. Murray also, believes that a student should not try to acquire a B.A. based on economic grounds, but that they should go with what they really want to do instead. He also believes that children should receive all their core knowledge in their K-8th grade years. Although I agree with Charles Murray up to a point, I cannot accept his overriding assumption that all college students are 18 year olds fresh out of high school. And even more so I disagree with Murray’s suggestion for high school guidance counselors and his thoughts on maturity.…
The format of this article was different from other essays with its organization being difficult to follow. They did a good job presenting data because they used graphs and facts, but it was hard to follow the main point alone. Statistics and examples were a big part of this article. They backed up their claims by using several high-quality sources. One source was Mark Schneider of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). He is the author and editor of numerous articles and books about education and college. There are three common tools of persuasion and one they use the most is logical appeal. Logical appeal is persuading the intended audience with evidence and reasoning. Another appeal is ethos that represents credibility to the author. The last of the three common appeals is pathos that appeals to the reader's emotions. One example from the text is, "Research suggests that additional education improves overall wellbeing by affecting things like job satisfaction, health, marriage, parenting, trust, and social interaction." (page 1). In these many ways of persuasion Owen and Sawhill achieved their purpose of writing the…
In the article, “Are Colleges Worth the Price of Admission?” by Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, the authors did research on several colleges around the country to see whether our investment on higher education is really worth the money that we pay for it. The authors believe that universities are the ones responsible for the doubling of tuition costs compared to what they used to be , and not fulfilling the most important objective to student’s which is: “to challenge the minds of young people” (180). In the article, Hacker and Dreifus outline some things they think would help improve some of the problems in the college system and a few universities that they like, and tell us why these schools have won their favor. Being an incoming freshman at Grambling State University, I’ve been able to see some of the issues universities can have from budget cuts, to problems with the G-men football team.…
Charles Murray’s “Are Too Many People Going to College?” essay is adapted from his book published in 2008: Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America’s Schools Back to Reality. In this essay, Charles Murray aims to convince his readers that too many people are going to college, too many people whom do not have the proper core knowledge that is needed to succeed. Instead, many students get ahead of themselves and plan for an unforeseeable future, when they do not know if they are going to succeed in this higher level of education without that proper core knowledge or the proper linguistic ability. Charles Murray states his opinions in this persuasive essay by incorporating ideas of other works of writing by other people and by drawing the audiences’ attention through realistic situations. I will not be doing a critique, I will be analyzing his essay to see whether he used deductive reasoning or inductive reasoning.…
The big picture question In all the articles and the debate I analyzed is “Are to many kids going to college ?” Peter Thiel Former CEO and co-founder of Paypal and graduate of Stanford University and StandFord law school uses a strong form of logos to all his arguments, but his main argument is that Kids coming out of high-school need to think more of the future, and of their selfs not just stressing that college is your only option to become successful in life. Also for the motion that to many kids go to college is Charles murray who is a Political scientist and Author of two of the most widely debated social and influential social books, and also a graduate of Harvard college, uses great forms of logos and ethos to connect to his projected…
More people than ever before are attending college due to the endless opportunities that it provides. Louis Menand, a college professor and the author of “Live and Learn: Why We Have College,” explains the meaning of college through three theories that have been developed. Theory 1 supports the idea of the sorting-out process that separates the highly intelligent from the less intelligent. Menand’s second theory explains that college provides opportunities for developmental growth, personal growth, and teaches individuals about the world around us. These are valuable lessons that will not be learned anywhere else. Theory three supports the idea of people attending college to specialize in a specific vocation. I am a firm believer in Menand’s second theory. I believe that college should enlighten students in various ways to make for well-rounded members of society, that college leads individuals to the path of self discovery, and everyone should have an opportunity to attend college.…
Wendy Brown in the sixth chapter of Undoing the Demos talks about the misuse of higher education in todays society. She makes the point that we humans no longer seek higher learning for its traditional values. Instead we obsess over what the knowledge we obtain can do to further increase our "value". Brown states that, "It is not sought for developing the capacities of citizens, sustaining culture, knowing the world, or envisioning and crafting different ways of life in common. Rather, it is sought for positive return on investment." (Brown 177) This underlying truth has become an epidemic in todays education system.…
Throughout the course of our class we have read about many scholars and their thoughts on the schooling system. Our first author we read about was Rebecca Cox, a professor who thinks not only schooling should be improved but our entire political system as well, and her book The College Fear Factor explains exactly that. The second author discussed was Hsun Tzu who thinks that the goal of education should be to make a person who is truly consistent, but says that this takes time and comes with the experience of truly learning rather than relying just on memory. Freire was next and his thoughts on the schooling system are similar to Cox’s. He thinks students are seen more as objects rather than the subject and this is holding back our next generations…
Edmundson believes their objective changed from higher education to entertainment. The colleges turned their focus into making consumers happy. Edmundson describes a happy consumer as, “one with multiple options, one who can have what he wants. And since a course is something the students and their parents have bought and paid for, why can’t they do with it pretty much as they please?” (pg. 44) Edmundson believes the problem with this way of thinking is that students will miss out on something that could change their whole way of thinking. College students don’t want to be challenged they just want to make it through the class. A financial officer at the college broke it down to Edmundson saying that “colleges don’t have admissions offices anymore, they have marketing departments.” (pg. 44) According to Edmundson, to stay in business this change was going to happen. It was inevitable. This turning point is when universities and individual departments started competing for students. Colleges had to become lax in grading and major requirements. The author has noticed changes in the layout of his university over the past couple of years stating, “the place is looking more and more like a retirement spread for the young.” (pg. 43) Edmundson believes these changes are related to universities conforming to the buyer’s market. He states,…
Have you ever thought about the effects that college education has on an individual’s life? Individual students graduating high school are wondering whether or not they should attend college. College education has its pros and cons, but you can never go wrong with too much education. College education is the key to a successful future for individuals who are serious about college. 19.9 million students were enrolled in colleges and universities in 2013, compared to 13.5 million in 1990, 7.9 million in 1970, and 2.7 million in 1949 (Lazerson). Although, college education can be beneficial it is also very challenging. I believe college education helps individuals obtain a degree, with the degree persons can obtain a better job, and obtain more knowledge.…