Analysis Of College For By Gary Gutting

College can be a stressful time for students. They go to college to work on creating a better future for themselves. But sometimes everything gets so overwhelming, that they can’t do it anymore. In the article “What is College For?” I found the author Gary Gutting’s thesis to be “Nonetheless, there is incessant talk about the ‘failure’ of education” (412). Gutting proves his thesis to be true throughout the article. He makes different points as to why he thinks this epidemic of failure is happening in college. Access, dropouts, students becoming disengaged in learning, and focused mainly on studying for their jobs and careers. All of these things acting as the building blocks to one another in the epidemic of failure that is happening among

Students are constantly spending money over the course of four years or longer, on so many things from tuition, to dorm rooms, textbooks, and the basic needs like food and water. Many college students are coming straight out of high school. Some of them had jobs, and others did not. If I knew that I had to spend so much money, on everything, right away. I would’ve started working when I was five. Fortunately, I have parents who pay for my tuition, and help me pay for textbooks, and other things I need. But some people don’t have parents who can support their college education, or if they have paid, the cost might build up, and they can no longer afford to pay for school. So they have to withdraw or dropout. This also goes with a small part as to why I believe that college dropout rates are high, like I said, it gets too expensive for people that they can no longer attend college, without going into major debt. Gutting also talks about how, college students get these unrealistic ideas of what college life is from movies, and television shows, making it look like a dream place to go. Don’t get me wrong college can be an amazing time and place to experience new things, but the over exaggeration from the movies and

Student expect professors to teach them everything they need to know that relates to their future, otherwise it’s boring and useless, and they don’t care to learn about it. Or they need the material they are learning to be presented in a way that’s more appealing to them; but Gutting’s believes that professors shouldn’t have to make the material more interesting for the students, the students should want to learn about the subject and be interested in the material itself, without the professor having to make it interesting. Which brings me to my third point. As a result of these disengaged students, they only take time to study for what they need to pass the class, and not study to learn more and in depth about things. Which I think is kind of sad and true. I chose to go to college to help create my future, so I only study things that benefit towards my career in college, I don’t really branch out past what I need to know. Because why would I want to do extra work? We shouldn’t just be studying the material to help us pass the class we should be studying the material because we want to learn about it and know more about the subject, and it’s something that we find interesting. Another thing Gutting talked about was,

“Support for higher education makes sense only if we regard this intellectual culture as essential to our society. Otherwise, we could