In the 1920’s, the American economy was on the rise with no sign of stopping. Nicknamed the “Roaring ‘20’s,” this era brought about good times for most everyone except farmers. Farmers were buying expensive, new farm equipment with hopes of large returns, but their increased efficiency saturated the market. Their crop production increased too rapidly, and, to sustain themselves, farmers feverishly began to plant as many crops as possible to make up for falling prices. This over farming ruined the soil of it’s grasses. With no rooting to hold the topsoil, the prevailing winds of the 1930’s swept the soil all over the Midwest and destroyed any chances of farming for a profit. After it all, the need to pay off the debt they acquired while buying that expensive, new farm equipment forced the farmers to move away and get city jobs. This event was known as the Dust Bowl. In the 2010’s, America faces a similar threat. Teenagers are going to expensive colleges with hopes of large returns, but the abundance of college graduates is saturating the market. This lack of good jobs leads to over-qualified people being under-employed. The non-college graduates in this situation cannot get a decent job and feel that the only way to get employed is to go to college, leading to even more graduates. After it all, the need to pay off the debt acquired while going to expensive colleges forces the college graduates to scrounge for money in sub-par employments. I would call it the College Bowl, but that would sound a little too much like some sort of Football event. Maybe the Graduate Bowl would be a better substitute for the Dust Bowl, since being a college graduate these days just feels like being dust in the wind. Education is no longer the way to get...
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...it is seemingly impossible to force people to avoid college, it is best to just accept that the value of a degree is decreasing and will continue to decrease. Then, once nearly all of America has a college degree, the next hot thing will be to get a master’s degree, or maybe even a doctorate. It will be a dark day for America when that man scanning your milk at the grocery store is a doctor. Maybe the solution is to make getting a degree harder. Should everyone really be able to obtain a college degree?
Works Cited
McGuinness, William. "Half Of Recent College Grads Work Jobs That Don't Require A Degree: Report." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 29 Jan. 2013. Web. 05 Nov. 2013.
Weissmann, Jordan. "The Atlantic." The Atlantic. N.p., 23 Apr. 2012. Web. 01 Nov. 2013.
De Vise, Daniel. "Education." Washington Post. N.p., 13 Sept. 2011. Web. 07 Nov. 2013.
There is no need for everyone to get a college degree when they can be trained in technologies and trades that can offer a job and a paycheck. America still needs manufacturing technicians, mechanics, and carpenters. Without these key workers America would not be able to function properly. The USA needs to start encouraging its citizens to go to trade schools because that is where the jobs that make good money are. A college degree used to be the only way to get a good paying job but times have changed and getting vocational training from a trade school is the best option many people have for earning a living.
...t Bowl. Unfortunately the circumstances in the Great Plains all came to a head resulting in a horrific ten years for citizens of the Great Plains. The Dust Bowl caused government and people to look at farming practices and to evaluate their output. These policies resulted in overproduction of crops causing the prices to fall. The conclusion of World War I and countries that stopped importing foods added to the pain the farmers were already feeling. Yet with the establishment of government policies such as the Federal Relief Administration and the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act and with drought coming to an end, the Dust Bowl came to an end. The American people knew that they needed to do everything that was possible to end the Dust Bow. Tom Joad, the lead character in The Grapes Wrath best sums it up “ I know this... a man got to do what he got to do.”
Farming was the major growing production in the United States in the 1930's. Panhandle farming attached many people because it attracted many people searching for work. The best crop that was prospering around the country was wheat. The world needed it and the United States could supply it easily because of rich mineral soil. In the beginning of the 1930's it was dry but most farmers made a wheat crop. In 1931 everyone started farming wheat. The wheat crop forced the price down from sixty-eight cents/ bushels in July 1930 to twenty-five cents/ bushels July 1931. Many farmers went broke and others abandoned their fields. As the storms approached the farmers were getting ready. Farmers increased their milking cowherds. The cream from the cows was sold to make milk and the skim milk was fed to the chickens and pigs. When normal feed crops failed, thistles were harvested, and when thistles failed, hardy souls dug up soap weed, which was chopped in a feed mill or by hand and fed to the stock. This was a backbreaking, disheartening chore, which would have broken weaker people. But to the credit of the residents of the Dust Bowl, they shouldered their task and carried on. The people of the region made it because they knew how to take the everyday practical things, which had been used for years and adapt them to meet the crisis.
In “Should the Obama Generation Drop Out?” Charles Murray talks about how a college degree now days, is looked at higher than it should be when it comes to meeting the qualifications for a job. Most jobs that pay over minimum wage will require you to have a college degree, making it very difficult for people that either can’t afford it or do not believe in it, to get a reliable well paying job. Like Barack Obama said “It’s what you can do that should count when you apply for a job, not where you learned to do it”(Murray 97); a large amount of people have the skills for a job but do not have the degree to show for, making them not qualified for the job. Companies will not even give you an interview if your resume does not have any type of degree on it. That situation makes life very unfair for multiple individuals. There should be some kind of certification test for applicant to take to see if he or she meets the skills needed for the job. The benefits of discarding the bachelor’s degree as a job qualification would be huge for both employers and job applicants. Therefo...
Going to college gives students the chance to step out of their comfort zone, try new things, and discover who they are while pursuing a degree that may, or may not, interest them. In today’s world if a student drops out of college society assumes they are unintelligent, while in reality they could have come to the realization that being amazing at a trade job is better than being mediocre at a desk job. There has to be a way for students to want to finish college and find what they are learning interesting. If something doesn’t change, the system of postsecondary education will become a thing of the
Over the past years, getting a college degree has been the pathway to a settled career. College has been a reason for people to carry on after high school. Now that tuition has been raised, getting a degree seems to drain students with more loans and could be in debt. College has been raised to the point where people rather start working at a minimum wage than continuing with school. Working in a part-time job would be an easier choice rather than pursuing a degree.
In Children of the Dust Bowl, Jerry Stanley reveals an inspiring story to the rise to success for the Oklahoma native children who were affected by the conditions of the Dust Bowl.
Throughout the history of the United States, never before was there a longer period of dust storms to occur as The Dust Bowl, most commonly known as “the dirty thirties.” The Dust Bowl affected farmers in parts of the United States and Canada, but it was most commonly found in the Southwest/Midwest. Unlike other severe catastrophes which caused damage to ones ecology and agriculture, “Georg Borgstrom, has ranked the creation of the Dust Bowl as one of the three worst ecological blunders in history” (Worster 4) due to the fact it only took fifty years to accomplish. Many living in the Southern plains during this time of period struggled to maintain a living, “The bank, the fifty-thousand-acre owner can’t be responsible. You’re on land that isn’t yours. Once over the line maybe you can pick cotton in the fall. Maybe you can go on relief. Why don’t you go to California? There’s work there, and it never gets cold” (Steinbeck 23). The greed within the farmers during the 18th century unfortunately led to the Dust Bowl because they were too focussed on obtaining available rich acres to expand their industry and business for money. Ultimately, this led to the occurrence of “Black Sunday,” the migration of farmers fleeing to the Western parts of America, and the economic factors of those affected by the Dust Bowl.
In the article “Are too many People Going to College” by Charles Murray a W. H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, argues that our educational system needs improvement and that too many people are attending college. Some of Charles arguments on why too many people are attending college are obtaining a Bachelor’s Degree gives you a high paying job, college requires classes that are unnecessary, skill/talent may not need a degree and because they do not want to be labeled as dumb or lazy. Charles Murray makes a lot of good arguments on why too many people are going to college and I concur with his arguments.
... quickly discovering that maybe college isn’t the way. The American dream isn’t so dreamy. Student loan debts aren’t worth it when they could be better off without a college degree. The loans are destroying Americans hopes and ruining their lives. The government needs to remove it’s self from this and let the banks take over and compete with each other. It’s the only way to lower the tuition and costs of everything. The college degree is even losing its face value and hyperinflation is right around the corner. It’s time to wake up. College could be a good thing. Our government is too greedy to see it the way it needs to be handled an it is high time that anyone seeking a college degree look at College Degrees to determine if it really is worth the time and money and stop being indentured slaves paying on worthless degrees and a lifetime of paying on student loans.
If they are not motivated in putting their mind and time there is no point to force him or her to study in college. They will not study, but in turn, it will just be a waste of four years of time. It might seem that university is a good path for some people, but not for everyone. Some fields, require it and many occupations would be extremely difficult to have and function without it. What should be promoted nowadays should be either college or how to find a job suitable for you, but many argue that it should be not one or the other. The reason behind that is everyone is brainwashed that going to college comes before finding the perfect
The Dust Bowl was "the darkest moment in the twentieth-century life of the southern plains," (pg. 4) as described by Donald Worster in his book "The Dust Bowl." It was a time of drought, famine, and poverty that existed in the 1930's. It's cause, as Worster presents in a very thorough manner, was a chain of events that was perpetuated by the basic capitalistic society's "need" for expansion and consumption. Considered by some as one of the worst ecological catastrophes in the history of man, Worster argues that the Dust Bowl was created not by nature's work, but by an American culture that was working exactly the way it was planned. In essence, the Dust Bowl was the effect of a society, which deliberately set out to take all it could from the earth while giving next to nothing back.
There are so many students who would extremely grateful to attend any four year institution but can’t because of the lack of funds. College life can be very stressful, and the process can is very frustrating to most students the first two years. When the cost of college tuition is compared to the 21 century financial economy the cost does not make sense, because for a middle-class family it is impossible to afford sending their child to any four-year institution. It hard for students to graduate with the stress to pay-off hundreds and thousands of dollars in loans. Going to college is stressful enough without the need to worry about how we’re going to pay for it and what other costs will continue to rise with getting a degree afterwards. With the current increase of unemployment rate and the thought of going to college seems like a farfetched goal. Many people choice not to attend a four year institution, because they did receive a scholarship or enough government funding. Having a college background is very important for professional growth, it will eventually limit career opportunities. My stand point is, you may not leave college doing the same thing you began with but the life experience is endless. College experience not only gives knowledge that builds you into a better person by giving a broader erosion. With the cost of tuition increasing will hurt our generation, by causing physical and mental stress but in the end it will all pay off. Not all colleges are for the blame; some of the blame is our economy and other factors play a big roll. As students we need to be aware of all our resources offered, such as Pell Grants, and government scholarships. For example, the some states will pay for a student’s college if they graduate high school with a GPA of 3.5 or higher. There are many states that are willing to pay for all or some of college tuition only if students are willing to use
As stated earlier, the cost of college is too high and it needs to be reduced to a more reasonable amount. It is expected that young adults in this day in age would want to go to college or another post-secondary education school to receive higher learning and to somewhat better their lives. While this is true ...
College. It is the seven-letter word that almost every child will hear thousands of times while they are growing up. They constantly are bombarded by the idea that they must go to college if they want to be successful. However, what if this is a false statement. What if college isn’t as great as everyone makes it out to seem. Well, these days some people believe that young people are better off, not going to college. Over the years the economy around the world has changed. It has prospered, and it has fallen. As the economy went downhill the government began cutting funds in areas that they felt were necessary to exterminate. One of the largest areas of funding that was cut was education. Colleges began receiving less money from the government, resulting in a rapid increase of college tuition fees. Due to this, a lot of people believe that college tuition is too expensive for what you get, and not worth the money. However, most people believe that college is necessary in order to further their education, and in order for them to earn their degree. They think that this degree has the ability to help college graduates get a job and work up to a career that only someone with a college level degree is able to achieve. The truth lies in the facts, and statistics. College is the seven-letter word that all people should be thinking about. A college education is a valuable investment that everyone should strive to achieve, and is completely worth the expensive cost.