In the essay, "Why College is a Waste of Time and Money," Caroline Bird talks about how college is a waste of time and money be illustrating her ideas throughout the essay in vivid details, so the read can follow clearly. I was told to come up with two ideas that are effective, and two ideas that are ineffective. Although there were many ideas to choose from, I finally picked the ones I think are the best in the essay.
The first effective idea: “By 1970, colleges and universities were spending more than 30 billion dollars annually… According to estimates made by the economist Fritz Machlup, if we had been educating every young person until age 22, the bill for higher education would have reached 47.5 billon dollars, 12.5 billon more than the total corporate profits of the year.I think this piece of evidence is effective because it states and describes how colleges are wasting the corporation funding on students who probably don’t want to be in school, they just go because they are pressured to by their peers, society, and by their parents. This piece of evidence doesn’t say if these numbers come from highly financial troubled families, or by families who are kind of financial challenged. I will really like to know more about this idea that she states.
The second effective idea: “But bad as it is, college is often preferable to a far worse fate. It is better than the drudgery of an uninspiring nine-to-five job, and better than doing nothing when no jobs are available.” This is an effective piece of evidence because its talking about how students are just going to college because they have nothing else to do, or they don’t want to work a boring nine-to-five job. This goes with waste of time because these students will only put in little effort and probably end up flunking out of college anyways.
The first ineffective idea: “But when students rebelling against the Vietnam War and the draft discovered they could disrupt a campus completely, administrators had to act on some students complaints.”This his nothing to do with the main topic of this essay which is how college is a waste of time and money. I got absolutely nothing from this piece of idea. I totally don’t think this though goes with the essay… Do you??
The second ineffective idea: “All across the country, I have been overwhelmed by the prevailing sadness on American campuses.”What is she trying to say?… That American college students are more sadder and that they don’t speak up as much as other colleges around the country? This idea has no relevance with the main topic of this essay, because who knows how many colleges she went to, to determine this point of view. She could of only went to like two colleges to make this judgment. Who really knows. I just don’t see this having anything to do with her essay.
The last thing I wanted to talk about is how she states and give evidence of people and how they talked about how they “blew” their money on college and stuff. I don’t think I’m blowing my hard working money on college, because it’s a personal experience and it will better develop me in the future to succeed at my dream job. Which is, becoming a Dentist!!!
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You're dead on when discussing your first effective piece of evidence, but I should caution you about the second: that's an idea (an interpretation) that's not backed by evidence. How can we prove Bird is correct in that instance? Does she prove it?
ReplyDeleteAnd, I think, the bit about Vietnam is just there to show that students have pressured administrators (and succeeded). So, Bird says that students may succeed again...
I wonder what schooling dentists had to undergo when Bird wrote her essay, by the by. She might have had an interesting perspective on that process.