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What is the importance of higher education essay
What is the purpose of higher education
What is the importance of higher education essay
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What role should higher education institutions play in its students’ lives? This is a questions that has been asked and debated for many years. As Brighouse and McPherson ask “should they simply teach students skills and academic knowledge or should they play a role in shaping character…, (Brighouse and McPherson, pg. 2, 2015). Even though this has been debated for so long the answer seems eerily simple. Higher education institutions have a moral responsibility to play a role in shaping its students’ characters, so instead of the student focusing primarily on personal wealth and social status they focus on being better citizens that provide support for their communities locally and globally.
We are living in a society that is pushing merit or individual success over character and this is ever present in the higher education system. If the role of higher education is to educate and shape a
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I do not agree that these Ivy League schools are the only schools that are able to begin and make the changes in higher education. As in many aspects of higher education changes begin on the bottom up. More grassroots programs and projects have enacted change than Presidents or Chancellors. The moral role of higher education and its leaders to provide their students an education that shapes character can be affected by their misguided ideas of merit. If higher education institutions do not begin to realize the importance of character versus merit, society as a whole, will continue to place the individual over the collective good and social injustices and inequality will continue to be prominent
Owen and Sawhill maintain that college can positively affect one’s life by “affecting things like job satisfaction, health, marriage, parenting, trust, and social interaction. Additionally, there are social benefits to education, such as reduced crime rates and higher political participation” (Owen and Sawhill 640). By expressing this, Owen and Sawhill are trying to bring to mind the idea that by going to college, you will be an all around better citizen, which definitely plays with emotions because who doesn’t want to be a good citizen. Furthermore, Owen and Sawhill remark on the college decision process. Here, thier general claim is that when choosing a college, it is better to choose a college that will benefit you financially, not just the one you
In "Becoming a Real Person", Davis Brooks weighs on the notion of the purpose of college. He claims that there are three ways that college aims to lead us. The cognitive objective teaches us knowledge and how to correctly use it, the moral role helps us build a unique individual self, and the commercial role leads us toward a future career. These three roles play a part in improving an individual's future prospects. While I agree on the importance these roles take, Brooks undermines the significance of moral education in higher education.
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.
In todays’ society college has become more so a necessity rather than a luxury. With a job market without as many opportunities as in the past, college degrees have become required to gain most well paying jobs. Due to this it is logical to say that college should be an environment that properly prepares the young adult to succeed in the working world. Although there are some who believe that the youth of todays generation are unprepared, and that institutes of higher learning are not doing anything to aid the situation. This is a view shared by Jacob Neusner in his speech “The Speech The Graduates Didn’t Hear” and by Fred Reed in his blog post “On Campus at U.PE: The University Of Practically Everywhere”. The ideas both these men exhibit
The report, Higher Education for American Democracy, triggered changes in federal policies and subsequently the universities followed suit. Members of the commission arg...
College education also does a large of things for college students, these things can be both counted and not counted. Delbanco wrote about this when he wrote “The best reason to care about college – who goes,.... is not what it does for society in economic terms but what it can do for individuals, in both calculable and incalculable ways”(Delbanco 507). In the article Delbanco writes about what one of the alumni at one of his talks said to him afterwards. He writes about the experience of this alumni in his article when he writes “Not only had a college education enriched his capacity to read demanding works of literature and to grasp fundamental political ideas, it had also heightened and deepened his alertness to color and form, melody and harmony...Such an education is a hedge against utilitarian values”(Delbanco 508). Delbanco also wrote how college education has maintained the same in some ways for many years. He writes “The tradition of liberal learning survived and thrived throughout European history but remained largely the possession of ruling elites. The distinctive American contribution has been the attempt to democratize it, to deploy it on behalf of things cardinal American principle that all persons, regardless of origin, have the to pursue happiness… is helpful to that pursuit. Educated can be characterized as “snobbish and narrow”, but that is not
The question of the century is whether higher education is worth the price and everyone feels like they have the winning argument. The article I have chosen to write about that pertains to this subject is by Charles Murray and it’s called “Are Too Many People Going to College?” I chose this article because I feel that the author brings up valid points that resonate with me and my beliefs towards going to college. Charles Murray attacks the specific issue of whether there are too many people going to college. Murray using different viewpoints shows how he believes that too many people are going to college and I agree with his reasoning.
In societies all around the world, young adults today - from all kinds of socioeconomic backgrounds - are feeling the pressure to pursue a post secondary education as much has they have in previous generations. This is often the influence of those individuals who have taught us everything that we know up to this point; parents, teachers, government figures, scholars, and even celebrities. It is at this time in our lives when we must begin to analyze certain elements of a post secondary education, like what is the purpose, who benefits from an individual’s education, and who should pay for it? The answers to these and other related questions will vary between societies, between nations, and between individuals. How we perceive the objectives
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.
Doctor Emily Hauptmann is a college professor that holds a Ph.D. from Berkley as well as a publish author. Doctor Hauptmann quotes Jeff Schmidt in her lecture as saying, “professors rarely challenge their institutions being described as Ivory Towers because part of the image, the part that makes universities seem like islands of autonomy is so appealing even when you throw the tried irrelevance in it.” Those institutions are what shape our country through higher education. The students of those colleges and universities are the people that go on to become doctors, lawyers, teachers, business executives and the politicians that run our country. Those politicians are the people that pass laws that direct the education system. It is a huge cycle that is never ending.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once stated, “Most…think that education should equip them with the proper instruments of exploitation so that they can forever trample over the masses. Still others think that education should furnish them with noble ends rather than means to an end.” What Dr. King was getting at in The Purpose of Education is that education holds many different values for many different people. How can we go about determining one standard value of a college education for a country so recognized for its diversity? Also, is it really true that everyone in our divergent society has an equal opportunity to attend a university? We cannot ignore the fact that the characteristics that separate us will ultimately have a profound impact on both our individual opportunities for and values of a university education.
Some may argue that a person who goes to an Ivy League school gains more prestige due to its history. But is prestige everything? An education is why you go to school, not the attention from the institution you go to. Major pharmaceutical, manufacturing and engineering companies have even started leaning towards accepting students from colleges such as the University of Illinois rather than Ivy League schools (Jobs).
How they are working to make higher education cheaper and why higher education is important.
Attending public schools as a child, I remember learning the basic skills on how to add and subtract, read, and write. These basic skills are necessary in order to function in our society and work force in the United States. As we all know each child learns differently, some learn faster than others and some slower than others. Our public schools have become overcrowded and we do not have enough teachers to fit the needs of each student. Some students get left behind and are not learning the skills needed to move on to the next level. What these students are not learning they can learn in higher education such as a college or university. In this report, I would like to express the importance of a higher education. I will use the works of John Henry Newman, Jon Spayde and Mike Rose, all three writers believe in having an educated society. Our students’ needs are changing, there are a growing number of immigrants with children coming to the United States from all over the world. They bring with them the language and culture of their country. The age in which they arrive to the United States determines how well they learn English and what skills they will need to acquire to become productive in our society. The task of teaching our children the basic skills is becoming harder and harder each day, making it harder for our education system to achieve their goals. There are a high number of students graduating from high school who does not have the skills needed to meet the needs of the work force in our society. A higher level of learning is needed to make our society literate.
Education plays a vital role in shaping tomorrows’ leaders. Not only can we become a better nation by acquiring the skills necessary to be productive members of a civilized society. Increase knowledge to actively achieve and meet challenges that can produce changes in which are productive for attaining business innovations, political and economic objectives.