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”
for dorm life. By utilizing this antithesis in his work, Deresiewicz reaches out to his audience that even though lectures and college dorms have two separate atmospheres they can come together as one to uphold the most beneficial college experience. Not only do these words contain a strong connotation, they also aid in creating a tone of instructive. Correspondently the best discussions regarding life occur during college through dorms, meeting, groups, and classroom information. In addition, Deresiewicz mentions that “the classroom is the grain of sand; and it’s up to you to make the pearl” by utilizing this metaphor it encourages students to take charge of their education. The literal part to this metaphor is that to create a pearl an oyster first needs grains of sand as a basic then through defense mechanisms it is transformed into a pearl. The metaphorical meaning to this is that for something beautiful to occur it takes time and application for it to happen. To summarize college is the prime time to discuss a variety of topics because this is the time when students are exposed to different people with diverse viewpoints.
Rick Perlstein states in his article, "What's the Matter with College?" that college should be a time of self-discovery. He thinks of college as a gateway into to adulthood where everyone is suddenly gaining this new sense of freedom and finding their own identity. It was a time one to read their first banned book and see their first independent film. Perlstein seems to consider one's college years as the most defining years of their life. Today, however, students do not have the luxury of attending an institution solely in the name of self-exploration. The college experience is indeed different from what it once was, much to Perlstein's chagrin. No longer are students going to college for the college experience that was once known by past generations, instead, they are going for the opportunities promised by 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
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.
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,
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.
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
The right and privilege to higher education in today’s society teeters like the scales of justice. In reading Andrew Delbanco’s, “College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be, it is apparent that Delbanco believes that the main role of college is to accommodate that needs of all students in providing opportunities to discover individual passions and dreams while furthering and enhancing the economic strength of the nation. Additionally, Delbanco also views college as more than just a time to prepare for a job in the future but a way in which students and young adults can prepare for their future lives so they are meaningful and purposeful. Even more important is the role that college will play in helping and guiding students to learn how to accept alternate point of views and the importance that differing views play in a democratic society. With that said, the issue is not the importance that higher education plays in society, but exactly who should pay the costly price tag of higher education is a raging debate in all social classes, cultures, socioeconomic groups and races.
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.
How imperative is it that one pursues a traditional college experience? Although it might appear that Charles Murray and Liz Addison are in agreement that the traditional college experience is not necessary for everyone, Addison provides a more convincing argument that higher education is necessary in some form. This is seen through Addison’s arguments that college is essential to growing up, that education is proportional to the life one lives, and that community college reinvents the traditional college experience. Not only does Addison have her own opinions about college, but Murray does as well.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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