College Is A Waste Of Time And Money By Caroline Bird

Have you ever heard the saying “stop and smell the roses”? It can often be used when someone overlooks the true meaning of something. Author of the article “What Is College For?”, Gary Gutting, feels very strongly about this concept as it pertains to college and the experience it offers. Gutting received a doctorate from St. Louis University and enjoys studying the philosophy of religion and science. He feels as though students are lacking academic engagement, and do not enjoy college because they are there for the wrong reasons. In his article, “What Is College For?”, Gutting effectively convinces his audience that college is a haven for knowledge and new perspectives. Through his use of surveys and analyzation of perspectives and his statistical knowledge based on former studies he is able to persuade his readers that college is the right path. [This is a good start, but you want to get a little more specific—how is Gutting using ethos, pathos, and logos? What specific uses of it make his argument strong?]

Throughout the essay, Charles Murray stresses the idea that college is the wonderland of finding oneself and to find the career that one would want to follow for the rest of their lives. “College is seen as the open sesame to a good job and a desirable way for adolescents to transition to adulthood. Neither reason is as persuasive as it first appears.” Murray, C (2008) Practically spoken, this is not normally the case. College is a fair amount of work, much more work than one would normally acquire through any course of a high school or secondary school setting. In no way saying that the average student cannot meet the requirement and achieve success over the amounted work, it would also be ridiculous to expect every graduate to pursue going into higher education with the expansion of work that will be given.

In the essay “Are Too Many People Going to College,” writer Charles Murray explains that not everyone is in need of going to college for three main reasons: a liberal education should be gained in elementary and middle school, many people already have knowledge and skills necessary for a technical career, and many students are in college to “buy an admission ticket-the B.A.” (246) and ensure employers consider their resume. Murray does not argue anything against college itself but more against society and especially the education system. Murray also accuses guidance counselors and parents of “automatically encouraging young people to go to college straight out of high school being thoughtless about the best interests of young people” (249).

In the essay, Two Years Are Better Than Four, the author, Liz Addison, gives her opinion on the importance of community college. The main point that she is trying to convey to her audience is that going to a community college is not harming the essential college experience. For some individuals, such as herself, the two-year college experience is exactly what they need to further their education. Community college is an affordable place that can “foster dreams (Addison)”. Throughout the reading, Addison makes compelling statements to prove the point which she is trying to make.

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

In Freeman Hrabowski’s piece, “Colleges Prepare People for Life,” he mentions the differing opinions between going to college and choosing another path. Many people find college too expensive, and once a student graduates, he or she will face enormous debt and potentially risk still being unprepared for the working world. Hrabowski acknowledges this, and also notices that many students who do attend college occasionally make the wrong decision in terms of choosing a school and major. But while the stakes are high, he argues that college not only provides financial stability, but also allows students to become more virtuous citizens in the long run. He does this by providing information to backup his claims, using a passionate tone to explain his beliefs, and paralleling college attendance with good intentions.

In “College Is a Waste of Time and Money,” written by Caroline Bird illustrates that college is not for everyone. There are many reasons that Bird lists so that readers and colleges can understand that tuition is never going to decrease. Bird uses diction, tone, sentence structures, locos, ethos, and pathos to prove that college students attend college hoping to get a better job and people who decide not to go to college do not want to waste their time and money.

In the essay “College Value Goes Deeper Than the Degree” author Eric Hoover claims a college education is important to one 's well-being so they can get a job and be productive in other parts of life. Promoters of higher education have long emphasized how beneficial college’s value and its purpose. Many believe the notion that colleges teach students are life skills to apply anywhere, they also work hard to earn a degree and learn specific marketable skills which they can use to get a good job. Though obtaining a college education and a degree is helpful in countless of ways, it is not necessary to pursue a college degree in world where a college degree is seen different now, people without turn out fine, the growing average of debt that students who attend college have to pay off and people without a degree can obtain many jobs that do not require college degrees.

Andrew Delbanco’s essay “A college Education: What is its purpose?” gives three reasons why college still matters. Delbanco teaches at Columbia University, where he’s the director of American studies and has written several books on the meaning and benefits of college. Delbanco, begins his essay by discussing what college means to each individual student. He states, “For many more students, college means the anxious pursuit of marketable skills in overcrowded, under resourced institutions. For still others, it means traveling by night to a fluorescent office building or to a “virtual classroom” that only exists in cyberspace.” (1) Delbano successfully uses pathos to appeal to his audience’s emotions, his personal experience and anecdotal combine to persuade his readers to consider or realize the importance of receiving a college education, however his essay contains minor flaws that can counteract his claims.

Does college really give graduates the tools and knowledge required to succeed? In the article “Where College Fails Us”, author Caroline Bird attempts to argue that college may not be worth as much as people are led to believe. Bird believes that with the rise in college graduates being well above the Department of Labor Statistics anticipated job needs, college is quickly becoming a waste of time. Moreover, several reasons listed depict colleges many shortcomings, including the stress it puts on students and the unrealistic expectations it gives them combined with huge financial burdens. The author believes that the successful college graduates would have been successful regardless of their education, and that the majority of students felt forced to attend. Finally, she states that before wasting your money on a college education the reader should reflect on her article and determine if there is still value in a college experience. Although Caroline Bird presents many persuading arguments against the college experience in her article, I believe her logic to be outdated and generalized, and her content lacking of discrediting information. I disagree that all college graduates are taking dead-end jobs, and universities have withdrawn from the social side of their educational experience.

Marty Nemko, in the article, “We Send Too Many Students To College,” acknowledges that colleges have become obscenely expensive and that it is possible to be successful without going to college. Arguing that too many students are sent to college without realizing that it is not imperative, Nemko targets parents in his claims that colleges focus on educating in the cheapest way possible and most importantly, that the advantage of past college graduates in the job market is declining. One of his main reasons is that even though the average college graduate makes more money, hundreds of thousands of students in the bottom half of their high school class do not succeed in higher education. Nemko’s article is the most persuasive article on whether college education still has value as he argues that college is not beneficial to everyone through demonstrations of hyperbole, and figurative language.

In her article “College Is a Waste of Time and Money”, Caroline Bird attempts to pursued her readers that colleges are overflowing with students who don’t belong there. Her article first appeared in Psychology Today (May 1975). Since this material is outdated, I find it hard to believe that most of the responses by students and parents quoted in the article still hold true. The author has set out to pursue the readers that college is a bad and unnecessary choice for today’s youth. Yet the author holds a bachelors and a masters degree from two different universities. I would think that if she thought college was really a bad choice and a waste of time and money, she would not have gone back to get her masters degree.

Nowadays, seniors students in high school are qualified to graduate and peregrinate to college to get a degree for their future jobs. There is an author, Pharinet, who verbally expresses that, “That there are too many students enrolled in school who simply don’t belong there” (680). Pharinet says that in her article, “Is College for Everyone?” She argues that college is not for everyone and that students should think deeply afore enrolling. She claims that students who are not academically ready and financially stable are the most mundane in college. Pharinet commences her credibility (ethos), logically (logos), and emotionally (pathos) with broad facts and statistics, a real-life situation, and word of mouth on why college is not for everyone.

It is a well known fact but there are many people including counselors, parents, teachers, and friends who resist saying it out loud for fear it will sound like discouragement and negativity: college is definitely not for everyone. The pressure on high schools students, especially those that excel, to attend a college or university is enormous. And in the case of a bright, industrious and motivated high school student, attending a college or university is an obvious career choice. For those students, it's only a matter of what university to attend, whether one's SAT score is high enough, and the availability of the money. Then there are the millions of high school students who are not really personally motivated but are being pressured by their counselors, teachers and parents should they attend college if they really don't care? This paper examines those issues.

The decision to obtain a higher education beyond high school is no longer a question of if, but when. This is the question that author Caroline Bird discusses in her article, “College is a Waste of Time and Money,” written in 1975. This text strives to convince students, parents, and advisors that obtaining a degree might not be in the best interest for those involved. Circling around the idea that college is a requirement and no longer an act of free will. Bird starts the article off strongly by building her credibility through her own personal research and other credible sources as well as appealing to readers through logical reasoning using numerous statistics, but fails to convince readers and discredits her ultimate goal through a disconnect in her use of analogies.