Two Years Are Better Than Four By Liz Addison

The essay, “Two years are better than Four” was written by Lis Addison which was published in the They Say, I Say book. This essay is about the author, Liz Addison explaining her feelings and experiences of going to a two-year community college. In her essay she talks about a man named Rick Perlstein who believed that college really doesn't matter that much, but going to a four-year college is better than going to a two-year community college due to the college experience being better. Throughout the essay Addison mostly compares and contrasts why going to a two-year community college is better than going to a four-year college. She uses what Mr. Perlstein says about his years at a four-year college to write her essay and explain why a community college is more beneficial to students and their futures. Throughout the essay she lists all the benefits of what a two-year community college can do for some students that a four year university can not.

Community college is an underrated option for many students. As Americans grow society has drilled into us that we need to continue our education after high school to become stars in this world. Addison writes about how going to a university was seen as a rite of passage and was a way to find ourselves. In today society not going to a university is seen as not being good enough to make it in to anywhere better. This is why many students will attend university when it would have been more feasible to attend a community college first.

Simmons uses senior high school student Isabella, as well as other students repeatedly as a foundation for his main arguments. By using Isabella’s essay Simmons is able to paint a picture as to the education system and how it impacted the outlook of higher education on students. Instead of emphasizing the impact of a good education, there was emphasis on economic status and what a

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.

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 the New York Times article “I Owe It All to Community College: Tom Hanks on His Two Years at Chabot College” published January 2015, the author Tom Hanks talks about his experience in Community College. The article being published in the New York Times was directed at an older group of people. Hanks begins the article effectively persuading the reader that Community College changes the lives of the students who attend. Hanks addressed his experience at a two-year junior college in Hayward, California with positive critique. Hanks’ succeeds with his claims of community college being a alternative to students in search of a afforable higher education, through his use of ethos, pathos, and logos.

He suggests in order to reverse these trends of colleges, and help restore the freedom in society, the audience should actively come together and require that Congress outlaw discrimination based on college degrees. College cannot truly make all people equal as many people face barriers of achieving a higher education, which then creates a division of class due to a lack of opportunity. Banning the use of degrees to evaluate skill and talent will go a long way toward opening up more genuinely equal opportunities. This amendment would help create more fair opportunities to those who don’t have a degree but do have certain skills. As Blank states “there are far more too many people who “take” French than who “talk” French. There are far too many people who “pass” history than understand it” (Blank 265). This suggests that most college courses don’t really help students actually learn and retain the skills they “master” because students mainly worry about actually “passing” rather than “learning”. Blank argues that this issue is becoming more and more of a problem as it is “converting the educational system into a training facility” (265). In trying to become multi-purpose, dispersed, and culturally aware, colleges are becoming the opposite as they lose the essence of compulsory schooling and become more curriculum based

Similarly, in “Two Years Are Better than Four”, Liz Addison argues that Community College is a good option for those who are not prepared for college or are unable to pay for a traditional 4-year degree. “Community college welcome people who comes from different background” (Addison). Because how much affordable Community college is in comparison to a traditional 4-year college. Community College gives hope to those who parents are blue-collar workers trying to give a better future to their children or those like my stepmother, who cannot obtain a four-year degree from medical school because of how much it costs. However, she can look for

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.

Charles Murray’s essay proposes that American colleges are being flooded with individuals who are either unprepared for higher education or who are simply forced into attending college and can’t succeed because of the lack of certain innate abilities. Murray’s essay goes on to take issue with the idea that the pursuit of a traditional college education is somehow strategically creating a separation of the American class system. While Murray makes many salient points with regards to America’s obsession with college education as a standard into a class of the intellectual elite, the essay fails to take into consideration the various motivators that can lead to student success, despite

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.

Mark Edmundson, the author of “On the Uses of a Liberal Education”, is an English teacher at the University of Virginia who expresses his concerns about the trajectory of the universities and colleges in America. Edmundson depicts how college students today have “little fire, little passion to be found,” towards their classes (4). In an effort to find the source of this lack of passion, Edmundson describes contacting other professors about this issue while refining his own ideas. Ultimately, Edmundson comes to a conclusion. He believes that the consumer mindset of college students has hindered American universities as a whole. My target audience is my professor, Professor Chezik. Looking closely at his wording, formation of sentences, and idea structure, one can see a recurring theme throughout Edmundson’s essay. Edmundson uses fragments, specifically at the beginning of his paragraphs, to start his point, pose counter arguments, and to have a poetic refrain.

The article Two Years Are Better than Four was written by Liz Addison which she responded to Rick Perlstein’s opinion piece about “What’s the Matter With College?”. Based on her experience, Author Addison claimed that community colleges unconditionally allow students to begin which give them opportunities for understanding and everything possible. Because of letting any students in, community colleges would give discoveries of their independent thoughts and independent studies first. She was proud of getting her education by entering community colleges in America as mentioning, Thomas Jefferson’s writing, “Everybody should have an education proportional to my education.”. She also criticized about about Mr. Perlstein and his friends said that

Community colleges in the United States develop rapidly and have become a vital component of the postsecondary education delivery system. As of 2011-2012 school year, 45% of all undergraduate students were enrolled in public two-year colleges, approximately 8.3 million students (Knapp et al., 2012. Cited by AACC Fast Facts). And it seems that with globalization and Obama’s education agenda, the trend of growing enrollment in community colleges won’t change. A high school graduate who decides to pursue postsecondary education may face with a dilemma--whether enroll in a community college or a traditional four-year college. Even within a community college, a student may be faced with a choice—enroll in a vocational program and enter workforce after graduation with a vocational certification, or choose an academic program with an intention of transferring to four-year institutions.

It is difficult for me to write about Addison’s response to Pearlstein’s essay because it generated in me such a negative response from the first paragraph that I actually was irritated that I was compelled read it. I felt that Addison addressed the “They” but not the “Say”, at least not enough of it to figure out what point she was debating, if she was debating. The only take away from her response was that Pearlstein is privileged, based on what I don’t know because she doesn’t tell us, and that Pearlstein feels that “College as America used to understand it is coming to an end”. She does not illustrate any of Pearlstein’s points except to comment on “a pretentious reading list” and then begins to speak of her O’levels from a foreign