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Robert Reich's Essay: Why College Shouldn T Be For Everyone

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Why is it that college is idolized even though you have to pay crazy sums of money? The assumption that college is the only way to get a good job makes it very difficult for low-income families to assist their children in finding a “better career”. Author Robert Reich believes that college isn’t for everyone and shouldn’t be idolized. While most people think that college is ideal Reich makes many claims stating that college is not for everyone and shouldn’t and backs that claim with evidence, reasoning, and stylistic language trying to explain why college shouldn't be for everyone. The overall argument and claim are that college shouldn’t be for everyone and Reich throughout the article show what he is talking about by making statements like “not every young person is suited to four years of college. They may be bright and ambitious but they won't get much out of it. They'd rather be doing something else, like making money or painting murals.” and uses his stylistic language to back up the sentence by saying “They feel compelled to go to college because they've been told over and over that, a college degree is necessary.” showing how he understands what teenagers and adults feel when they are pressed to go to college or attend university for something they don't want to do. …show more content…

Going to say “ Last year, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York
,46 percent of recent college graduates were in jobs that don't even require a college degree.”
And then back up the use of hard facts and numbers saying “America clings to the the conceit that four years of college are necessary for everyone, and looks down its nose at

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They mention on page 209, paragraph 1, that not all college degrees or college graduates are equal and that for certain schools, majors, and occupations, college may not be a smart investment.

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Reich also uses the argument that even if a student does graduate, that doesn’t mean that they will make good money, as a large amount of students' post-graduation jobs didn’t pay the right sum to make a degree worth it. He compares this to a study that was released by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York that stated,”46

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People go to college to get a good paying job, have job security, and get a degree. Well at least that’s what it should be about. That’s what Charles Murray believes in his essay “Are Too Many People Going to College.” Murray counters the argument of Sanford Ungar who believes colleges should have a more liberal approach towards its classes and have students actually learn a broad range of real life skills instead of just going into a career just because it pays well. In Ungar’s essay he explains the misperception that Americans have on obtaining a liberal-arts degree and how they believe it doesn’t translate well to the real world.

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Rhetorical Analysis on “Should everyone go to College?” People always wonder if college is worth it and if the amount made after college outweighs the cost it takes to get into college. Stephanie Owen and Isabel Sawhill provide an effective argument by saying that for most it is wise to go to college because of the Rate of return that college yields and the Variation in the Return to Education. (Page. 208-218)

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The authors’ emphasis on “on average” is very effective at showing how their point makes sense and why it should be taken into consideration. I found the way that the authors focused on the minority more than the majority was skillfully effective at showing how some career paths do not require a college education and that the return in investment would not be worth the cost. Throughout their argument I found the writers to mostly use Logos and Ethos in their writing. The Logos is evident by the way they use statistics and the Ethos by how they state telling someone the only way to be successful is to go to college is a disservice. This is effective at making the reader think about how this should affect the decision of going to college and whether they should push someone to go to

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Nemko, Marty. " America 's Most Overrated Product: Higher Education". The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 2008, Web. Feb.28, 2017 Marty Nemko 's main argument in his article "America 's Most Overrated Product: Higher Education" is that college education is not necessarily needed in order to achieve a greater success in the future. He in fact argues that college education just creates a bigger debt that will be very hard to pay in the future for students.

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Recently, many have begun to attack and degrade higher education in the United States. In the book How College Works, authors Daniel Chambliss and Christopher Takacs claim, “As state support has eroded, and as more students attend college in an increasingly desperate attempt to find viable jobs, the price to students of attending an institution of higher education has gone up, especially at more selective institutions” (172). So is college even worth it? Caroline Bird’s excerpt from her book Case Against College “Where College Fails Us” is an adequately written article that agrees with those who question whether college is a good investment. Bird argues that although some students would benefit from college and succeed, many fall short, wasting

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“On average, college graduates make significantly more money over their lifetime than those without a degree… What gets less attention is the fact that not all college degrees or college graduates are equal. ”(pg.208 para. 1) Stephanie Owen and Isabel Sawhill are senior researchers at Brookings’ Center on Children and Families, Sawhill is also a senior fellow in economics study at Brookings’. Owen and Sawhill authored the essay, “Should everyone go to College?” The authors use a wide variety of rhetorical devices in the essay, including ethos, pathos, and logos to persuade their audience to take another look at whether college is the right choice for them.

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Throughout the essay, Charles Murray stresses the idea that college is the wonderland of finding oneself and to find the career that one would want to follow for the rest of their lives. “College is seen as the open sesame to a good job and a desirable way for adolescents to transition to adulthood. Neither reason is as persuasive as it first appears.” Murray, C (2008) Practically spoken, this is not normally the case. College is a fair amount of work, much more work than one would normally acquire through any course of a high school or secondary school setting.

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As a college student who is currently spending thousands of dollars to further my education and achieve a career goal, it was, at first, disheartening to read Caroline Bird ’s essay “College is a Waste of Time and Money”. However, after thoroughly examining her points, I now see that her essay is illogical. In her piece “College is a Waste of Time and Money”, Caroline Bird argues against the idea that “college is the best place for all high-school graduates” (1); in other words, college isn’t for everyone. Throughout her writing, Bird supplies her readers with evidence that explains how, for some individuals, college is a waste of not only time and money, but of intellectual effort, as well.

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College Isn’t for Everyone "By telling all young people that they should go to college no matter what, we are actually doing some of them a disservice" (Owen). This quote from “Brookings Paper: Is College a Good Investment” goes into detail about how college isn’t for everyone. By educators, parents, and authority figures telling graduating high school seniors that college is necessary, they are limiting the potential of that student’s true skills. College isn’t right for everyone and not everyone wants to go to college.

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Living where we live, you begin to comprehend that living off of $11.00 per hour including with your family will never suffice your needs. Getting a college degree can ensure the graduate a higher chance of being able to earn more financially. In the article “Why College Isn't And Shouldn't Have to be For Everyone” by Robert Reich, he states that “A degree from a prestigious university can open doors to elite business schools and law schools-and to jobs paying hundreds of thousands, if not millions. ”Even though Reich’s article is on the opposing side of the argument, he fails to overlook the fact that in the long run having a college degree will, and can open doors to many new opportunities. One of those opportunities is to be able get a well paying job that can earn more than the average non college graduate.

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If a person’s parent or guardian drilled the idea of college into your head, or if they told you ‘do what you want’ or ‘I don 't care’, or ‘You’re not going’. While college is great, there are other means of education. The value of college is a low because there are people who do not qualify for a college education, and also because there are other ways of post-secondary education other than college. College is not valuable because many people will not make it into a 2 or 4-year college, much less graduate from one. To support this, in the article Why College Isn 't For Everyone, it says, “As a general rule, I would use graduates in the top quarter of their class at a high-quality high school should go on to a four-year degree program, while those in the bottom quarter of their classes at a high school with a mediocre educational reputation should not.”

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There is an ample amount of information that leads people to believe that college is a great choice. In Source F, it is shown that, “Adults who graduated from a four-year college believe that, on average, they are earning $20,000 more a year as a result of having gotten that degree. Adults who did not attend college believe that, on average they are earning $20,000 a year less as a result.” Also, provided in Source F, “...55% say it [college] was very useful in helping them prepare for a job or career.” While these statistics are true, the negatives still outweigh the positives.

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