03.23.10- College is a waste of time & money

Evidence for:
“To keep their mammoth plants financially solvent, many institutions have begun to use hard-sell, Madison-Avenue techniques to attract students. They sell college like soap, promoting features they think students want: innovative programs, an environment conducive to meaningful personal relationships, and a curriculum so free it doesn’t sound like a college at all.”
- Ever since I started middle school, parents and teachers have been putting the focus on going to college right after high school. It started with the lower cost of tuition for me to go to community college for the first two years, along with the intrigue of being able to finally pick my own classes. The school giving names of classes like human sexuality, indoor soccer, and even more science based as astronomy gave me the illusion that it was going to be fun and enjoyable. What they don’t tell you is that half of the classes that are fun and enjoyable do not get you very far towards accumulating units/credits towards a particular major of study needed to get a diploma.

“And if he had the brains to get into Princeton, he would be just as likely to make money without the four years spent on campus.”
- If you have the ability to get into such a prestigious school, then you must be capable of learning without being forces to study certain things that may or may not be helpful in life. Someone who is learns quickly and effectively can do apply it to jobs of that are only taught be actually doing them. Reading a so call “manual” may get you some basic knowledge of where things go and how they work, but until you actually have your hands on experience you really don’t know anything. Bird talks about how if you have the brains to go to Princeton then you can be capable of doing anything well that you want to learn such as the car mechanic and then knowing so much that can open door for someone to own there own business.

Evidence against:
“This is the way it used to be with women, and just as society had systematically damaged women by insisting that their proper place was in the home, so we may be systematically damaging 18-year-olds by insisting that their proper place is in college.”
- I personally do not see how sending an eighteen year old to college could systematically damage them. How can some one be worse off by learning, even though it may be forced. It is true that not everyone one is built mentally for college but that is only a small percentage that is capable of being successful in the world without having schooling. To compare the way society thought women were better in the home to making an 18-year- old go to college is a bit extreme. To methodically make a women stay home and only do the choices of the house was hinder some to women; it did not let them live to the fullest potential. It did not allow them to explore different opportunities. Making a person go to college does the exact opposite. It gives them a wider range of knowledge, though sometimes it may be useless knowledge it is still knowledge nonetheless.

“Jerry Darring of Indianapolis knows that it is to make a dollar. He worked with his farther in the family plumbing business, on the line at Chevrolet, and in the Chrysler foundry. He quit these jobs to enter Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, because ‘in a job like that a person only has time to work, and after that he’s so tired that he can’t do anything else but come home and go to sleep’”.
- This evidence doesn’t seem to help her point of college being a waste of time. Jerry goes back because he finds a nine-to-five job so exhausting that he isn’t able to enjoy the rest of his life. Going back to school to find a job that will give him enjoyment rather than a high dollar sign paycheck. What is the point of making a lot of money if your to tired to even spend it in the end?