Should Everyone Go To College Stephanie Sawhill Analysis

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I recently read an essay called “Should Everyone Go to College?” by Stephanie Owen and Isabel Sawhill who write a great argument stating that going to college should depend on the situation instead of stating that everyone should go to college. Stephanie and Isabel go over the rate of return on education through graphs and statistics that show that those that go to college are often time more successful than those that go straight into a career. However, going to college should be dependent on the chosen career path more than anything else because some career paths do not require a college education. Also, the rate of return is a big thing to think about before committing to going to college because paying for college to go into a career that …show more content…

The fact that not everyone needs to go to college is the main point that Stephanie Owen and Isabel Sawhill write about in great detail throughout their essay. Even though the authors do say that people that go to college usually earn more, they state that this is on “average,” and that the key focus of their essay is to focus on those that the benefits are not greater than the cost of going to college. (Page 211, Paragraph 1). They also include a graph right under the text that shows how “on average” people with a college degree earn more than those that are just high school graduates. (Page 211, Figure one). 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