College At Risk By Andrew Delbanco

Improved Essays
In the American society today, college has become a tradition. No matter the culture or ethnic background, it is deemed as the most practical method of succeeding in life. The importance of attending college is so evident that schools are now dedicating their time to preparing the students for the workload and content by the implementation of Advanced Placement classes. Furthermore, they create programs that are fixed towards encouraging students to increase their chances of getting accepted by participating in extracurricular activities and volunteering. Although some schools are not as equally resourceful and lack the necessary funds to provide students with the requisite circuitry to succeed in college, the pressure to attend in order to …show more content…
In his essay, College at Risk, Andrew Delbanco, a professor at Columbia University, insists that college “can provide the pleasurable chastisement of discovering that others see the world differently and that their experience is not replicable by, or even reconcilable with, one’s own. It is a rehearsal for deliberative democracy” (350). A college education provides students the freedom to think and structures their thoughts in ways that are critical. Also, it reveals to students the importance of how others view the world differently from their own, already formed perspective. All of which are resources necessary to becoming a better person, a better citizen of the American country and learning one’s identity. Additionally, he states that college is “An aid to reflection, a place and process whereby young people take stock of their talents and passions and being to sort out their lives in a way that is true to themselves and responsible to others”(353). Other than discovering oneself and acquiring skills that makes one a better citizen, college is also a place which helps young people develop their talents and passions. Thus, college is still worth it because it provides students with more than just education but skills and a true sense of

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    In “The Difference between High School and College” a part of the book “College Thinking: How to Get the Best out of College, the author Jack Meiland talks about how college is a subversive institution ,and how many students will go home and create arguments with their parents over the way they live because college changed their views on society. His first point he believes that “In senior high school as continuation of elementary and junior high school in this respect”(104) that means in high school you learn the same things that you in elementary and middle school and high school. You just will learn the same information just into much deeper detail and harder problems that make you mind work harder. In college you are given theories or opinions on how something is said so you have to think and…

    • 1222 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Rose, Mike. “What College Can Mean to the Other America.” The Mcgraw-Hill Reader: Issues Across the Disciplines. Gilbert H. Muller, 12th ed. , Mcgraw-Hill, 2014, pp.…

    • 1015 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Opening one’s mind up can allow them to accept or try new experiences. Hunter Rawlings’ “College Is Not a Commodity. Stop Treating It Like One” explains how the importance of college has changed in recent years. In almost all cases nowadays, it is essential to have a college degree in order to get a good job. Colleges require the student to put forth the effort in order to obtain its true value.…

    • 827 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Compare and Contrast the views of Higher Education From a general point of view, higher education can be beneficial to some college students. As I compare and contrast the article, “Should Everyone Go To College” to Freeman A. Hrabowski’s “Colleges Prepare People for Life”, I realized Hrabowski’s article has primarily focused on how higher education leads to many opportunities, and does not go in depth on the negative aspects of why college cannot be suited for everyone. In contrast, the article, Stephanie Owen and Isabel Sawhill’s “Should Everyone Go to College” contains both sides of the argument. This article explains how college may not be the ‘right’ choice for everyone because every career path or goal is different,…

    • 1392 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In, “Two Years Are Better Than Four”, Liz Addison describes the importance of community colleges and how they have been helpful in providing quality education and experience to people of all backgrounds especially the people who belongs to minority groups and has a low standard of living. She responded to Rick Perlstein’s assumptions about community college coming to an end and being unable to matter anymore, with opposing statement, “My guess, reading between the lines, is that Mr. Perlstein has never set foot in an American Community College” (Addison, “Two Years Are Better Than Four”) and proves him wrong with reasons like anybody can easily join college and came out with life discovery experiences. Being one of the students of a community…

    • 756 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    When did college begin to become a way of life, a necessity in most households? Most parents encourage their children to go to college from a very young age. For a lot, it’s simply a way of life. You grow up, leave high school, and then go straight into college. In Frank Bruni’s, “The Imperiled Promise of College,” he speaks about how numerous people are going to college, yet a lot of them don’t have jobs after they receive their diploma, or that their job has nothing to do with what they have studied.…

    • 311 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The value of a college degree is a dispute that is commonly contemplated, yet rarely answered. I will attempt to express my attitude towards college education, personally defined as an Associate’s Degree for returning adult students. In an effort to explain the greater benefits of a college degree despite the common rhetoric that it is not financially worthwhile, I have considered the positive and negative effects of doing so. I have examined the following articles, “Learning by Degrees and Live Chat With the Author,” “The Major and the Job Market, the dream and the reality,” and “In the Basement of the Ivory Tower,” to support my stance. When one maintains a desire to progress academically and an open-mindedness to educational demands in the…

    • 842 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This philosophical study will a argue in favor of the “whole person”” theory of higher education in Delbanco’s and Socrates argument on the importance of self-examination in the modern collegiate education. Delbanco argues that the idea of the “whole person” arises from gaining experience in higher education, which is defined through a standard liberal arts education. Currently, the extremely high cost of education has made it very difficult for many Americans to get a liberal education, which often makes college appear to counterintuitive in terms of a professional career: One of the difficulties in making the case for liberal education against the rising tide of skepticism is that it is almost impossible to persuade doubters who have not experienced it for…

    • 1122 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    They Say I Say Analysis

    • 2196 Words
    • 9 Pages

    In the book, “They Say, I Say” chapter fourteen discusses the necessity for tertiary education. The fundamental focus of chapter fourteen is to determine whether or not higher education offers the bang for your buck. The chapter initiates disputes beginning with the article, “Are Colleges Worth The Price of Admission?” by Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus. This article conveys a controversial issue of the rising cost of admissions and the descending quality of college education.…

    • 2196 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Every little kid has fallen at some point. Riding that bike, trying to balance on a beam or just plain bad balance. A mother would lean down and kiss the boo boo and tears away. But how many times would she do the same thing, making sure her child protected in the best way, not letting anyone hurt her baby? Eventually would she say that tears aren’t necessary?…

    • 856 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A Change in Perspectives To the everyday adult, college students are easy to come off as lazy, self-indulgent, disrespectful- what anyone would say of a young adult who lives for the party and gives less than their best efforts in school. On the contrary, to the everyday college student, this narrow-minded adult would be very wrong. It is not until Rebecca Nathans works in her book My Freshman Year that we have the adult challenging the prejudiced views non-students have on these young adults.…

    • 1055 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In this essay, “College Prepares People for Life,” by Freeman Hrabowski portrays the notion that college is an absolute requirement to prepare students for “THE REAL WORLD”. Hrabowski embellishes the fact that without college, students are not going to be ready for the competitive job market and won’t be able to reach a high level of success if they don’t have the college experience. Yes Hrabowski point of view is completely understandable because in today’s society college has become such a norm and a place if you don’t go you will ostracized for, that students have no choice then to mindless focus on something that they are not passionate about. As a joiner in high school I can vouch first-hand the peer pressure from school, friends, teachers,…

    • 1107 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Price Of Admission

    • 902 Words
    • 4 Pages

    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.…

    • 902 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    College is Not for Everyone Today, more people than ever are attending community colleges and universities. Often, a collegiate degree is a prerequisite to meaningful employment (Pincus, 341). There is even social pressure pushing many to attend. I feel that the university education system has many structural shortcomings, and that institutions of higher learning often do not have students ' best interests at heart.…

    • 712 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    When is College your Friend When growing up, college has been so ingrained in my family that the idea of not doing so never even occurred to me. However for others, attending college has become one of the most paramount decisions in our life as a result of its extensive potential for consequence of both favorable and not. Due to its deeply controversial nature, the answer is not just in black and white. In Caroline Bird’s article “College is a Waste of Time and Money”, she has created a sensational work, but one that simply can’t hold up to scrutiny upon a closer inspection.…

    • 1084 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays