Price Of Admission

Are Colleges worth the Price of Admission? Every parent wants the best for their children, and they want their children to go and study in college, in order to get a dream career. Now days it’s not a cinch as the costs of colleges are rising, and quality of education is dropping. In the article ‘‘Are Colleges worth the Price of Admission’’, by Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, the underlying thesis is simple: college is too expensive, and return on investment of college is rapidly decreasing, constraining some extreme changes in order for college to remain practical and logical for potential college students. The article also maintains that colleges are spreading themselves by attempting to take on too many roles simultaneously, doing none …show more content…
If the college experience is improved, then, it will gain value at an even faster pace than it is losing it, due to increases in tuition rates and the like. To that end, the article puts forth some interesting ways to more effectively engage students. One of the most interesting of these ways is to simply increase cognition of students at college, forcing them to use their minds more in the process. For instance, the article states that "some 64 percent of undergraduate students are enrolled in vocational majors, instead of choosing fields like philosophy, literature, or the physical sciences" (Hacker and Dreifus 180). This means that these students should be persuaded that their "impractical" studies are actually a practical and logical use of college, encouraging others to take that route if possible as well. The article also emphasizes the importance of the undergraduate years of a student 's life, as these are oftentimes filled with the largest amount of …show more content…
Indeed, the article puts forth numerous examples of colleges that take different and, some would argue, illogical approaches to funding, and students with varying degrees of success. For example, one college that the article analyzes is The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, which uses the normal standard testing procedures, and also throws in a home test that consists of a number of open-ended questions. On top of this, the college is dedicated to tuition-free education. Examples like this show that education does not have to adhere to the formalized structure that students have become adapted to. Indeed, what might be ticket is, in fact, a restructuring of college as it is known today. This can be done by taking many of the established elements, and removing or reworking them entirely according to the article. In fact, one model for success that the article uses is Western Oregon University, which abandon many of the established trends in college today to more squarely focus simply on educating students. Indeed, the article states that "There are no star professors, little research, and the administrative pool is bare bones. All energy is focused on one thing: educating undergraduates" (Hacker and Dreifus 187). The key, according to this section, is to simplify the concept of education, looking at what is truly