Where College Fails Us Analysis

The higher education system in America is more than an institution geared toward obtaining professional skills for a future job. College is a place where students acquire skills for their lives outside of the workplace. In today’s society, the majority of college graduates are unable to secure a job in the field in which they have studied, it is the diverse, non-vocational lessons they have learned while attending college that prove far more useful in what Caroline Bird has brought to light in her essay, “Where College Fails Us.” Bird states that colleges provide a “personal, rather than intellectual, development” in a student’s life (132). Higher education cultivates students in a manner that helps them decide what career field they will enter, structures them to be dedicated, and how to live with their newfound freedom. When a student enters college for the first time they already have an idea of what …show more content…
In Benjamin Barber’s essay, “America Skips School” he writes, “the fundamental task of education in a democracy is what Tocqueville once called the apprenticeship of liberty: learning to be free” (120). When a student graduates high school they are entering the time in their life that offers a myriad of new freedoms. This is a crucial time in an individual’s life where the choices that are made make the largest impact to their future. The higher education system helps the student make the transition into their newfound freedom by providing them with numerous tools and outlets. There are councilors staffed to provide insight to students with difficult questions, there are clubs and organizations where students with like minds can gather and assist each other, and there are job fairs and other events where students can network and learn from people with real world experience on how to more constructively utilize their