An Analysis Of Andrew Delbanco's Essay 'Making It In America'

Humanity needs to change before all information is censored. In “College at Risk,” Andrew Delbanco discusses liberal learning and the “whole person” that may not be developed in college due to a lack of income. Liberal learning develops the “whole person” by teaching the basic ethics and morals a person should have. Anne Applebaum presents examples of censorship in her essay, “The Decline of American Press Freedom.” She uses China and Yale to make the point that differing forms of censorship are doing more harm than good. In the formal essay “Making it in America,” Adam Davidson brings up what other people tend to ignore. He discusses the injustice the low income factory workers are receiving, even though productivity has grown. Humanity

Delbanco gives the example of a Chinese exchange student in class to show how different education is for different countries with different values. The Chinese exchange student explains the main difference when she says, “Coming from a culture in which a ‘standard answer’ is provided for every question, I did not argue with others even when I disagreed” (Delbanco 222). In China, she was discouraged to question her teachings because China is taught to believe what they are taught to be true, until discovered otherwise. It was a shock for her when she arrived in America and the students are openly questioning their professors. If she had not gone to college in America, then she would not have never openly questioned her teachings. This is why China is in trouble. The Chinese people are taking everything at face value. No one is questioning their teachers and without questions the students do not have a full understanding. Another example of the Chinese stuck in an information drought would be one of Applebaum’s example of censorship saying, “the Chinese government also demanded that Microsoft delete the writings of a free-speech advocate from its blog software” (Applebaum 643). Microsoft is only one example of censorship in China. This

Delbanco explains how students have changed their reasons for attending a college when he states, “...yet on the assumption that immersing themselves in learning for the sheer joy of it, with the aim of deepening their understanding of culture, nature, and, ultimately, themselves, is a vain indulgence” (222). Secondary education has become too expensive for learning to be an indulgence. Students only go to college to get a degree in order to gain a high paying career. Davidson explains how dire the situation with low paying job is by saying how the process should work, “Only through productivity growth can the average quality of human life improve” (339). Unfortunately, the productivity growth only leaves a bigger pay gap. The factory workers are still low paying jobs. According to Davidson, their paychecks should grow as productivity grows, but of course the companies are going to be greedy with their money and take the extra cash for themselves. These low paying jobs will never change and that is why a higher education is important in order to get a well paying job. This cycle is hard to break and many do not. FOr this to change, companies need to be less greedy. Factory workers should be paid more with productivity growth and universities should make the tuition more