Bird's College example essay topic

Chris Harrison Writing 39 B, Assignment 15 February 2003 Justification For Higher Education After analyzing William A. Henry's In Defense of Elitism and Caroline Bird's College is a Waste of Time and Money, it is clear that Henry's argument concerning the purpose of an education is more rational than Bird's due to the fact that Henry supports his claims with credible statistics, logical insight, and uses current real world scenarios. Bird, on the contrary, bases her argument solely on manipulated statistics, overly dramatic claims, and ridiculously out-of-this-world scenarios. While there are various viewpoints and perspectives on the subject of higher education, Henry for one, has landed the conclusion that in America higher education for the masses has not only been extremely costly economically, but it has also greatly lowered the educational standards and therefore defeated the purpose of higher education itself. Henry's primary grievance against higher education for the masses is that the influx of mediocrities relentlessly lowers the general standards at colleges to levels the weak ones can meet (335). Quite simply, higher education is by no means any higher if the standards keep lowering just so some students can barely meet the minimum standards. For example, although Iam a full supporter of the bell curve in college, it is certain that this recent innovation has had its share in lowering the university's educational standards.

This practice of calculating the students average score on an exam and then re-scaling grades to help those who didn t fare as well is a clear example of bringing the standard of college down to everyone's level (336). I can certainly attest to this claim because I was recently directly affected by the bell curve. In the first quarter of my freshman year, I received a score of 44 out of a possible 100 points on my Physics 7 A final exam. According to the general 10% increment grading scale, this would mean that I earned an Fon the exam. However, thanks to the mediocrities earning even lower scores than myself and the establishment of the bell curve, I fared quite nicely and escaped with a B- grade.

Although this is definitely good news for me, Henry's claim that the mediocrities tend to lower the educational standard seems to prevail. The influx of mediocrities flooding college campuses has also lowered the credibility and status of a college degree. Henry acknowledges this and states that the trend in recent years has been eliminating layers of middle management " much of it drawn from the ranks of those lured to college a generation or two ago by the idea that a degree would transform them from the mediocre to magisterial (334). Of course, this is no longer the case.

Higher education does not necessarily lead to higher income or status. For example, the median income for a stockbroker who has a college degree is approximately $50,000 a year. A truck driver earns the same income and potentially even more depending on the amount of hours he works, all without a college degree. This is exactly why Henry is endorsing higher educational scarcity. A college degree doesn t even guarantee a job or higher pay anymore due to the mediocrities making the institution of college and a degree itself mediocre. In addition to lowering college standards, higher education for the masses has also imposed great economic costs on the American people while delivering dubious benefits...

(333). While some may consider this to be an investment in human capital (333), Henry disagrees. He supports his claim with a demanding statistic from the U.S. Labor Department's Bureau: 20% of all college graduates toil in fields not requiring a college degree, and this total is projected to exceed 30% by the year 2005' (333). So one must then ask the question why these students went to college in the first place? This returns us to one of Henry's most important points: Mediocre students have been flooding into colleges the past couple generations thinking a college degree will transform them from the mediocre to magisterial (334), when in turn a college education is only as good as the individual being educated. As wasteful as it may seem, college graduates working in fields that don t even require a degree is indeed a trend today.

It reminds me of a close family friend of mine who graduated from the University of California, Riverside in 2000 as a math major. Today he is working as a private investigator for an insurance company. This job not only lacks the requirement of a four year college degree, but can actually be obtained rather quickly by simply enrolling in a six-week training program. It is certainly not fair to simply categorize my friend in Henry's group of mediocrities just yet, but it is safe to say that he would have been better off not going to college in the first place. In his case, Henry's claim that college may well be a credential without being a qualification (333) is confirmed.

While Henry makes his claims with regards to rationality, Bird attempts to undermine the thinking of her readers by overdramatizing her claims and then trying to support them with manipulated statistics. Her simple argument is that too many students are in college for the wrong reasons and therefore they are wasting their time and money. Unfortunately, her approach and lines of reasoning for various claims are not so simple. Bird expresses her feelings that she is overwhelmed by the prevailing sadness on American campuses (324). However, instead of supporting her claim regarding the sad emotional mind-set of college students, she simply proceeds with general observations such as too many people speak little and then only in drowned voices. Sometimes the mood surfaces as diffidence, wariness, or coolness (324).

Then, in a desperate attempt for support, Bird makes a dramatic claim comparing women of the early 1900's to current 18-year-olds as she suggests that we as a society may be systematically damaging 18-year-olds by insisting that their proper place is in college (324). In dire need of credible evidence to support such an outrageous claim, Bird turns to The Conservative Carnegie Commission and states that an estimated 5 to 30 percent are in college reluctantly (325). Unfortunately, this manipulated statistic also fails to support her claim: If she implies that 5 to 30 percent of college students are sad, well then 70 to 95 percent of students are not sad. Based on Bird's previous claims and line of reasoning, it is now easy to see she has begun to undertake the practice of manipulating statistics in addition to being overly dramatic. In an effort to kill the age-old slogan A college education is among the very best investments you can make in your entire life (327), Bird blatantly makes the claim that college is the dumbest investment you can make (326). As she attempts to dig herself out of yet another hole, Bird and her associate ingeniously invent the scenario of a young man whose rich uncle gave him, in cold cash, the cost of a four-year education at any college (326).

She then comes to the conclusion that if a student out of high school put his tuition money totaling $34,181 into a savings bank at 7.5 percent interest compounded daily, he would have at age 64 a total of$1,129,200 (327). When examining this ridiculously ludicrous scenario, many flaws begin to surface. For one, how many families actually have a lump sum of cash worth four years of college expenses? As for students here at the University of California, Irvine, most do not, since 60% of the enrolled students receive some form of financial a idN.

To further weaken Bird's scenario, I must also mention that public schools such as UCI are about 80% less expensive than private schools such as the previously mentioned Princeton University. However, the majority still has trouble paying tuition without some sort of financial assistance. After several attempts to undermine the institution of college through preposterous claims, Bird realizes that her argument is flawed. She introduces the concept of psychic income in an attempt to make up for her previously irrational claims: Psychic income is primarily what college students mean when they talk about getting a good job (328). Unfortunately, the topic of psychic income actually softens her thesis.

She dismisses these types of rewarding jobs simply because they are hard to come by (329). After devaluing a liberal arts education, Bird attempts to undercut more solid professions such as lawyer and doctor by simply stating that since there would be more than the target ratio of doctors to persons in the population, there are no guarantees in these professions either (329). After dissecting her claims and supporting statements, it is clear that Bird is trying to undermine the value of a college degree. Tying this into her previous claims, we must ask since when is anything in life guaranteed? If we consider her implication that some students should obtain vocational education, well then it is obvious that there are no guarantees in jobs of that nature either. It is troubling to see that Bird simply dismisses certain jobs just because there is competition for them or because she thinks colleges fail to warn students of the competition.

William Henry and Caroline Bird both have sharply different approaches in regards to making there arguments about the purpose of an education. Although they share common ground on various issues, the two become divided due to the types of examples and evidence they use to support their claims. After careful analysis, it is clear that Henry's line of reasoning and concrete evidence tops that of Bird's due to his logical insight. Unfortunately for Bird, she is simply left scrambling in the dark in search of bogus evidence in an attempt to backup her claims.