Summary Of College Is A Waste Of Time And Money By Caroline Bird

Analysis Paper In “College is a Waste of Time and Money,” Caroline Bird analyzes the actual importance of a college education to the future of an individual. Bird suggests that, despite the contrary common belief, there are many better investments than paying for a college degree, concluding that for most students it is not worth – both financially and non-financially – to go to college. Overall, Bird presents her point of view in a straightforward way, and she also accesses many interesting aspects of the topic. However, she fails to provide enough evidence to support many of her arguments and does not explain some inconsistencies in others, which results in a weak thesis.
To prove her point, Bird starts by arguing that most students do not …show more content…
When she analyzed the reasons of the sadness of college students, for example, she inferred that such sadness must be caused by being in college. However, the correlation of both events does not mean that one of them is implied by the other – as, for example, the mentioned sadness could be related to the transition to adult life or another phenomenon that happens simultaneously to college life. Therefore, Bird’s assumption is, in fact, a post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy. Furthermore, the referred research led Bird to conclude that students are unhappy because they are not needed by society. However, the text does not give any specific evidence to justify such claim. Instead, Bird tries to support her argument with an oversimplified deduction that the world already has too many people. Such lack of evidence can also be noticed when Bird tries to argue against considering college an “institution.” She states that society should accept teenagers’ personal preferences on whether to continue studying or not; however, she does not explain why teenagers’ can, in fact, know better, and tries to get around by appealing to an overly emotional statement of the “fundamental egalitarian