Mark Edmundson's 'Who Are We And What Are Doing Here'

Ask yourself a question, is college worth it to you? If you answered no then in this case it will be beneficial for you to read this. When thinking about college you have to think more about what you want out of it rather than what you have to do to get through it. The skills that you get while attending college can be very beneficial to you. Having the critical thinking and advanced communication skills that you acquire in college. Getting a college degree and bringing what you learned to the real world will benefit you in your quest for financial success.

“What’s the key to success in the United States?”(Steinberg,2010), author Jacques Steinberg starts off his article “Plan B: Skip College” with a powerful question that has been asked by many Americans. Majority of Americans first thoughts would be higher education. The ideology that obtaining a degree is the best and sometimes only way to be successful in the American economy. This has been instilled in numerous children growing up. Steinberg states “perhaps no more than half of who began a four-year bachelor's degree program in the fall of 2006 will get that degree within six years according to the department of education”(Steinberg,2010). Students who tend to not excel in high school often take longer, or at times finish a higher education at all. These

People go through obstacles when they go to college and some do not. Some people believe it is a waste of money and others believe college guides students in the right direction for the future. In the book “They Say I Say with Readings,” Stephanie Owen, Isabel Sawhill, and Sanford J. Ungar explain why people should or should not go to college.

While reading “Becoming a Learner” by Matthew L. Sanders, I found many interesting points on college education that I have never really focused on. One of my favorite statements that Sanders makes is that “who you are still matters more than what you can do because it speaks to your long term potential for success.” I thought this was very interesting and inspiring because it is encouraging the reader to focus on developing themselves rather than some impractical skills. I also thought it was really cool when Sanders made the point that “it’s not only what you do that counts; it’s also how you do it.” I thought that this quote is relatable on so many different levels, especially in the aspect of college. Sometimes you can take the easy way

The whole point of college is to get a degree and then go into the job market and be successful. How are kids supposed to get good grades when they don’t even care and just want to have fun? That’s why Edmundson stresses the fact that college really isn’t what it should be. There should be stricter regulations on getting good teachers forcing kids to learn. Students can still have fun and enjoy themselves but they also need to focus on school. After all where go to college to pay thousands of dollars and waste it away by doing bad academically.

College is an opportunity to truly discover who you are. Often enough, you hear people saying “You should really major in this field, I think you would really enjoy this career.” or, “Do you think you really want to study that? Have you thought about what you will be doing ten years from now?” filling your mind with self doubt, uncertainty, and the anxiousness of not knowing what you want to do with the rest of your life. Mark Edmundson wrote an article titled, Who Are You and What Are You Doing Here?, published in Oxford American addressing college students and their families how the most important thing college students should focus on is personal growth. When students take their courses seriously their engagement can help finding out who they really are and which future career will lead not necessarily to great financial success, but to a career and life that is very satisfying. Edmundson wants to inspire his audience and have them take what he is saying seriously. Edmundson uses satirical informal language and hypothetical situations to effectively persuade college students to focus on their personal growth in order to create a life and career that is deeply fulfilling.

“In the United States today, there is no more certain investment than a college education”(Carnevale and Melton). Education has always been a major component of American society. One can only go so far without an education, and the more education and knowledge someone has, the better their chances of being successful. Some people believe a high school education is enough, and it is, enough to land a job at a fast food restaurant. I speculate they feel this way because they feel school is not for them, or maybe they just do not want to go far in life. To get far in life people must go above and beyond, and learn things that others do not know to make them

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

Mike Rose uses his relatives’ experiences along with his own to show that college is not for everyone. This point of view is supported by Owen and Sawhill in ‘Should Everyone Go to College?”. “It is a mistake to unilaterally tell young Americans that going to college… is the best decision they can make.”

What we get out of the college experience, we use in our day to day lives. Even the things we think aren’t important or useful end up becoming helpful. The material we learn in college is fundamental when it comes jobs and life in general. We are taught to make choices. We are taught how the real world works, and how to turn our education into our way of life. “…the really significant education in thinking that we’re supposed to get in a place like this isn’t really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about.” (Wallace 199).

For our first essay, I selected the topic group “Is College the Best Option” from They Say, I Say. I chose the group for a few key reasons. I have read, streamed, listened, and watched many different forms of the discussion on higher education, hearing many compelling arguments from both sides on the issue. The education system in the United States of America is a topic that I continue I strive to learn about whenever the opportunity presents itself and it did just that with this assignment. Although I had never read any of the selections from the three authors that I chose, I had heard of the President of The University of Maryland, Freeman Hrabowski, but I had never read any of works or realized that he was a writer. It was an enriching experience to read more about the subject from new perspectives. I believe that the insights I gained from the readings have helped shape my views on the topic and will help me in the near future.

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.

Cureton and John Tagg both look at the bigger picture. In “Collegiate Life: An Obituary,” Levine & Cureton discuss larger reasons for why students behave the way they do in college–hope and fear. From these two emotions, they show how other attitudes–consumer expectations, psychological “damage,” and a utilitarian approach to learning–are a result of these two greater forces (Levine & Cureton 712). On the other hand, Tagg, in “The Decline of the Knowledge Factory: Why Our Colleges Must Change,” places the blame for the failure of higher education on universities. He writes that students’ disinterest and professors’ complaints are both due to the failure of the universities. Edmundson’s essay is given context and an explanation in Tagg’s

I feel that Edmundson’s point of view is focused on the definition of education. In society, a different education is portrayed, that is the kind of education that leads to materialistic success. He clearly stated that many times the student’s focus isn’t education. But their ultimate focus in only on getting a diploma and to graduate. Then their definition of real success is to find their first job, getting their paychecks then eventually realizing that it’ll be used to pay their own student loans. Society seems to have the wrong idea of what the pursuit of education should be. Usually schools aim on getting students that will succeed and possibly give back to them in the future. But only if everyone changed their outlook and perception on

Caroline Bird’s essay “College is a Waste of Time and Money” explains her beliefs on why, for some people, going to college is an ineffective and inefficient use of their time. She states that many students do not belong in college because they are there for the wrong reasons and they are not happy learning. She also gives evidence to suggest that going to college and getting a degree does not actually allows a person to make more money in their life time. Her final claim is that college does not prepare most students for the real world and the jobs they will have once they graduate.