Deresiewicz begins his viewpoint on college education by contrasting different experiences and criticizing those that didn’t get the most out of their education. By “shaming students out of their intellectual appetites,” Deresiewicz criticizes students that believe college is just solemnly for learning about a career. The author is trying to get students to think of the bigger picture- what they can later obtain from their education- which requires students to realize that preparing for a career isn’t enough to expand on their knowledge about the world. Deresiewicz also contrasts the differences between college lectures and a dorm environment by using diction such as “stringency” and “normative” for college lectures and “freedom” and “subversive”
It may come as no surprise to some that a quality education has the power to provide, for those who seek it, the opportunity of personal and professional transformation. It can be said that a society which encourages higher education is more likely to yield a population of individuals who are civic minded and purposeful as opposed to a society which does not. In an article entitled “What Can College Mean? – Lessons from the Bard Prison Institute, author Ellen Condiffe Lagemann supports the importance of a liberal arts education but also presents the case that quality education in the United States is not available to all.
In their texts Both Zinsser and Barber are questioning the conventional assumptions that college is the main passage into a financial and social accomplishment. To achieve these goals students are often faced with unnecessary pressures. Their purpose or reason for challenging such assumptions is to make the readers become aware of the conventional notions, and possibly direct them out of their trapped positions to make their own choices. As today's students will be the potential future leaders and make-up of the society, there is a high stake. In the past the society has accomplished to thrive the students into the clichés and false assumptions about college that exist today, nevertheless this accomplishment has opened a door for some critics like Zinsser and Barber to come up with a different view on college education and pressures that can well be the next conventional assumption in the future.
Edmundson states, “they are, nearly across the board, very, very self-contained… there 's little fire, little passion to be found” (Edmundson, 3). Edmundson’s critic of consumer culture includes criticism of the students themselves and their lack of passion. Deresiewicz’s interpretation of youth culture undermines this “little passion” by looking for this youth to change the current wave of university culture and its lack of learning. Although it is important to note, that Edmundson’s critique of youth was the students of the 90’s while Deresiewicz appears hopeful for youth of the 2010’s. The youth of today and those of the 90’s in historical context may differ in their passions for higher education and change. While this timeline puts perspective on each context of the work, it is not unfair to criticize Edmundson’s superior tone when looking at the youth of his time. Edmundson’s viewpoint of college students distances himself from those needed most to make his vision of a better university culture come
In a society where a collegiate degree is almost necessary to make a successful living, the idea that a student cares less about the education and more about the “college experience” can seem baffling. In My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student, Rebekah Nathan, the author’s pseudonym, tackles the idea that academics are less impactful on a student then the culture of college life. Nathan, a 50-year-old cultural anthropologist and university professor, went undercover as a college freshman for a research project. From her research, she hoped to better understand the undergraduate experience by fully immersing herself in college life. To do this, she anonymously applied to “AnyU,” a fake acronym for a real university,
Going through college should not be as easy as going through a drive-thru at a fast food restaurant. Young adults should be interactive and critically thinking throughout their education, not disinterested of it. Author Simon Benlow, in his essay “Have It Your Way: Consumerism Invades Education,” believes that students are turning to consumerist ways, not thanks to the college’s culture (139). Since my return to community college, there has been a trend with the younger adults: Not caring.
Is college a beautiful illusion of that if we go then all our problems in life won’t be so hard or is it actually is a place people go to shape and mold themselves into better people. Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, in their essay, Are Colleges Worth the price of Admission? Says that whether or not you go to a public or private institution, the cost of attending college has doubled, compared to when our parents and every other generation before us went to college. They went on and made a few good point by saying how schools should engage the students more, also how they should replace tenure with multiyear contracts, but their arguments about postgraduate training and spreading donations around is where they might had begun to lose their audience.
In Andrew Delbanco’s article A College Education: What Is Its Purpose, that appeared in newspapers’ Sunday edition of Parade (Delbanco 2012), tells a different side of college. Perhaps the darker side of college life that most know about but hesitate to speak about. The reason for this essay is to rhetorically analyze the content of Delbanco’s article and give examples in support of the findings. A College Education: What Is Its Purpose—delbanco unequivocally addresses the reason behind going to college. In a sense asking who, what, where, when and why of college students and those that will soon be attending college.
Everyone knows that person from high school that just wasn’t cut out for college. It’s not a bad thing by any means, but if you’re thinking about heading off to college like many American teenagers often do, think about this: going to college can be a waste of both your time and your money. I’m not the first to say it, and I sure as hell won’t be the last. In Stephanie Owen and Isabel Sawhill’s essay, Should Everyone Go to College?, the two authors take a strong economic approach to justify going to college. Owen, an ex- senior research assistant at Brookings’ Center on Children and Families and current research associate at the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan center for research on the problems of urban communities, and Sawhill, the co-director of the Center on Children and Families and a senior fellow in economic studies at Brookings, claim that the return on investment (ROI) of a college education is overwhelmingly positive on average; However, they also bring light
Personal development will always be the heart of lifelong learning in college which will promote the buildup of character within oneself, meeting new people, and maturity. In “Learning of Freedom” where Michael Roth analyses his ideas of education, he states that, “Higher education’s highest purpose is to give all citizens the opportunity to find the “large and human significance” in their lives and work” (Roth 3). Roth not only seeks for the highest purpose of education but truly where it makes a difference in a person’s life and I truly agree with him. It’s where people want to create themselves and get to gather new concepts of knowledge to than be able to apply in the real world and not just be labeled as “human capital” (Roth 2). With the help of college I personally have slowly learned to develop my own reasoning’s and judgments, making myself grow as a person to speak my own thoughts and ideas clearly and improve my own human significance. College education enhance personal development in so many levels to experience the chance to meet new people and socialize to strengthen student’s communication skills and be rich in culture intellectual. Also, reach a higher level of maturity to enter adulthood and be
Imagine telling that to a student who just finished four years of hard, grueling, expensive work; or, even worse, a parent who paid for their child to finish that same grueling work. But, in some ways, that statement can’t be any further from the truth. College can prepare a student for life in so many more ways than for a career. However, in the way that college is supposed to prepare soon-to-be-productive students, that statement could be right on. As a student myself, I’ve found college to be a little bit of both. I often find myself asking, "How will this help me later in life?" But, then again, college gives me more control over my life and where I want it to go. In trying to figure out what exactly made college like this, and whether the way I felt was felt by others as well, I interviewed an Anthropology teacher at Las Positas College, Mr. Toby Coles, and I examined an essay by Caroline Bird called College is a Waste of Time and Money. The two sources offered interesting views from both side of the spectrum.
"The more we know the world around us, the more successful we will be." This quote, from the introduction of my high school chemistry book, was my driving force as a teenager to attend college. My expectations of college were to gain insight into a world that I had not yet discovered. I had high aspirations of receiving a good education and obtaining a good job when I graduated. But four years later when graduation day arrived, I felt unfulfilled. In evaluating my education, I realized that I learned how to get good, but not great grades. I learned how to study to make the most of my time. The focus I shared with many of my peers was not always to appreciate the information received, but rather, to value the counsel from someone else who previously took that professor's class and maybe to be lucky enough to get a hold of last semester's examinations. Basically, I acquired useful skills for any job: to follow directions, to give the boss what he or she was asking of me, and to network and gain insight from other colleagues. It was still disturbing to me that after four years of schooling, I felt I had not received the education I initially expected. Overall, college does not bring out the full academic potential of the students who invest the time and money into an education. Teachers need to set aside their biases and restructure and develop curriculum, as well as student-teacher relationships, in order to truly develop college students into freethinking, exploratory people.
What is the purpose of college? Imagine a classroom with 30 students. The desks are in evenly spaced rows facing the whiteboard. The professor paces back and forth, while reading off a PowerPoint. The students frantically write what is said, in case of something not being in the textbook. Every week there are quizzes and every month there is a test. Not once does the professor ask the class their thoughts on the topic. Rarely does the professor stop to answer questions. When the class is stopped for questions, the textbook is used to answer them. However, the answer mimics the original explanation, this ultimately leaving the question unanswered. There is a distance between the professor and students. Freire believes college should be used to improve society. However, this view is not shared by society. Students and the college itself feel the purpose of a college education is to get the recognition of training and knowledge that a good job requires because of the current college education system.
Like climbing a mountain, the desire for advancement through education requires vigorous, determined, and disciplined students. Students that can overcome mixed feelings of guilt, anxiety, and desire that can cripple the students’ success in college. Students must propel themselves higher up the mountain from a position that is lower in elevation than their more entitled counterparts. A substantial amount of determination and climbing ultimately leads to either success or defeat in the world of education. Students must challenge their own identities and relieve themselves of their past to succeed. The pertinacious character of working-class students provides a desire to escape to a place of acceptance and understanding. Through education students are challenged to discover themselves and what they are truly capable of, or fall off the mountain
He assumes students have no varied interests and will not develop any new interests throughout their educational careers, and underestimates the importance college campus resources and amenities have to students that utilize these features to facilitate their metamorphosis into a well-educated member of society. College is where people go to better themselves, it 's an experience you can 't simulate virtually, and there will always be individuals who thirst for that
College is a great place to help students explore what they want to do in the future and experience many new things. According to Rouse, “The better-educated workers not only enjoy higher income, but also better health, decreased likelihood of committing crimes and less reliance on social programs.”(Rouse Para 2) College does not only enable one to become economically successful, but it allows them to have a healthy life ahead of them. Attending college is the best way to prepare for tougher job requirements. Experts claim that even though one initially spend a large sum of money to begin a college education, he is most likely to earn it back with the increased pay he receives from having a degree. All people are not born with an innate talent so for those ordinary people to survive and to move on in this world, they need a college education. College education helps them to achieve their goals such as being a successful doctor, mechanic and nurse. According to collegeview.com, “Attending College provides students with the knowledge and experience they are unable to receive from a secondary education, and finding a way to fund a higher education now can pay off in a huge way in the years to come.”(Hudson Para 2) It can infer a message that how being in college help increase in knowledge and experiences and the use of the same experiences to live through this long