Analysis Of A Rational Optimist's View Of American Higher Education

In his article “A Rational Optimist’s View of American Higher Education”, Dr Lane A. Glenn discusses his vision concerning higher education in America. Inside the article, he explains and also re-futes the principal reasons why today, some people doubt of the importance of higher education such as colleges and universities in America. Glenn is writing to an academic and public audience in order to in-form them about what is happening to the education. His main claim is that receiving a higher education is still valuable.
Through his article, the author builds his credibility with a considerable ethical appeal. Indeed, due to his background in education, including more than twenty years of teaching and his current pro-fessional status in higher

In fact, he begins the article by stating that according to the opposite side, concerning the American higher education “Cost are soaring, teaching methods are outdated, not enough students are completing de-grees” and then he agreed with some of those complaints “problems do exist” before refuting them and expressing his claim “higher education in this nation is far from being expired”. This is maybe a way for him to show how he got the need of writing this article to express how positive he feels concerning high-er education in America. Besides, expressing the counterargument will prove to the reader that he made some research to find the main complaints” three chief complaints” before arguing against them. It also makes him more persuasive for the reason that he makes his argument stronger by cutting down the op-posing one. He framed his arguments the same way in the completion and competitiveness section by first expressing the bad news representing the opponent’s view which is that more than half of the peo-ple attending college did not graduate” more than 40% of American student…have not earned a degree after six years” and then he gave a good news justifying his optimism “Degree attainment in the united states according to Lumina, is steadily accelerating”. Dr Glenn by stating the bad news and then the good news, seems to be willing to make the audience be as optimist as he is, by showing them that the situation is changing and that Americans care more about earning a college degree. This mean that the reader may see that he is right when he claims that higher education is still