Analysis Of A Smug Education By Andrew Delbanco

College is a big part of life for a lot of people. Not only is a lot of time invested in making it through school by attending class and doing homework, but a lot of time is also spent on picking which college to go to. In Andrew Delbanco’s newspaper article “A Smug Education,” which was published by The New York Times on March 8, 2012, Delbanco urges that notorious colleges should stop encouraging their students to take excessive amounts of pride in which college they go to. Delbanco explains that the majority of people who attend these well-known colleges have more support than the average student, such as their families having more money to spend on tutors during the student’s high school years. I agree with Delbanco that colleges should …show more content…
A lot of the reasoning is the fact that these student believe that if they go to an elite school, they will be more successful and will have a higher income. On January 5, 1996, Professors Philip J. Cook and Robert H. Frank wrote an article entitled “The Economic Payoff of Attending an Ivy-League Institution.” Cook and Frank discuss the idea that students have in which going to an elite school will mean a better career for the students; therefore, they will receive more money than what they invested into the school. Cook and Frank also provide an example from 1994 where one student dropped a full scholarship from a smaller school in order to take out a loan to attend Yale. A lot of other students felt the same way, as Cook and Frank also report that “Yale’s applications rose 21 per cent that year and continued at the same level in 1995.” This trend is very clear, because students who get into these very selective schools now are so caught up in attending some of highest schools on the charts that they think they are above …show more content…
If a student may choose between either an Ivy League school, a non-brand-name school, or even a technical, then only that student can choose what is right for them. Delbanco only argues that students who attend more popular schools should not pick on those who do not go to a brand-name school. I, on the other hand, believe that students from any school should not disgrace others by saying that one’s school is better than the other. Delbanco states that the purpose of the education system is to provide an education for all, not segregate people based on where they learned their material from. More effort needs to be invested in helping others learn rather than this childish attitude about schools. If more effort is applied on the actual education that can be provided by schools rather than all of the vanity, then more people are likely to graduate from all kinds of schools with all kinds of skills and knowledge to help benefit our country as a