College isn’t for everyone-Education Essay Example
College isn’t for everyone-Education Essay Example

College isn’t for everyone-Education Essay Example

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  • Pages: 5 (1299 words)
  • Published: April 18, 2017
  • Type: Analysis
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Having a higher degree is one of the most common dreams for high school students.

To be successful in the contemporary world, you need an educational qualification-at least a degree or diploma from a community college. W. J. Reeves wrote an article entitled “College isn’t for everyone-Education” about college education. He takes into accounts different topics within the domain of education.

All these topics are discussed with brevity and comprehensiveness. The topics reflect his depth of thought and have profound implications.Furthermore, he uses a logical appeal (logos) as a rhetoric device. The evidence provided in the article is based on statistics and scientific studies, and is relevant to the reader. He beautifully organized the article is organized using cause/affect and division/classification methodologies.

Statistics is one of t

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he logical appeals that appear several times in Reeve’s article. Statistics augments his thesis and claims and thus becomes the most important element of the article as it is said that numbers do not lie, and they are always right.One can argue against anything in the article except the statistics and the numbers. One can not deny the assertions and/or claims that are accompanied by strong numerical evidence. For example, he writes that “Murphy reports that 75% of the American populace does not have a college degree” (6).

He does not assume here about the number of American population who do not have a college degree but provide proper facts and figures. I could not believe in a vague and unclear statement because it is hard to imagine that a country like United States have a populace of only 25% that hold a college degree.However, mentioning a fact from

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a book and citing that book augments his points and provides strong evidence to his claim. Additionally, he says “I’ve seen the number of adjuncts rise to its present-day level of over 50% in English composition classes” (4).

Again this number could be seen as unbelievable because it is a huge number. But as Reeves remained a professor for English composition classes for more than 10 years, so his calculations and statistics about his own field can not be labeled as erroneous. In both situations that I mentioned here, Reeves uses the statistics in an appropriate way to support his claims.Reeves also use scientific studies as a credible measure to support his claims in this article. Reeves extracts many evidences from a variety of books, reports, and other research studies and uses as a verified and verifiable evidence. These evidences compiled in books, reports and research are a manifestation of hard work and research work of the writers.

Many researchers contributed toward making it reliable sources. It is extremely important for a writer to do research and to use these secondary sources and information in his own work.That’s what we see in Reeves work and he excels in this art. For example, Reeves quotes from Gordon’s report that “70% of the workers in the coming decades will not need a four-year college degree, but, rather an associate degree from a community college or some type of technical certificate” (1). This shows how skillfully Reeves has extracted the information from Gordon’s report and summarized its crux in a single sentence.

Reeves does not use every available information on the topic, but he uses the most appropriate

and reliable books and reports to support his claims.Moreover, by using different sources and studies, Reeves wants to tell his readers that he is not the only one who claims likewise. Essentially it gives the readers a sense of confidence that it is not Reeves’ opinion merely but there are other writers and researchers who have the identical judgments about college education. As Reeves’ article is about education, and his audiences are associated with education, thus he employs much evidence that is relevant to those who are in universities or schools either studying or teaching.When we discussed this article in the class, most of the student took into consideration the point that “one-third of college students receive grades C or below…. for those students receiving C’s in reality deserve F’s, and the C is given to keep them in the college” (2) due to the reason that it was relevant to all of us.

We all talked about it and discussed it but each one looked at it from a different perspective. For example, when I read it, I believed in its factual details and recalled my Chemistry classes.I got C in both of these classes and my real grade was F. On the other hand, my friend with major in business studies said that “universities are business companies and we, students, are their customers. ” In reality, my friend’s views are similar to those that Reeves mentioned in his article.

He says that “college exist by some form of easy access, for access=numbers, and low numbers=low funding” (1). Reeves spent most of his life time studying and teaching, so he had the opportunity to observe

the educational institutes and education with a from different standpoints i. e. from students’ perspective and from teaches’ perspective.

Therefore, all his claims are relevant to his audience that includes teachers, students, and other personnel who are working in the education field. Proper utilization of cause and effect phenomenon is an approach that Reeves used in the article to be more organized. As an engineering student I always use the ‘five whys’ method which is a question used to explore the cause and effect relationships. When I read “College isn’t for everyone”, I do not feel to ask why this or that happened, due to the reason that Reeves explains each claim that he makes in the article, immediately and systematically.Reeves says, “Moms and dads, who foot the bill, delude themselves that going to any four-year college” (1).

Subsequently he provides explanation for that by saying; “will make their sons and daughters literate, analytical …… and therefore employable” (1) and does not leave the concept half-explained. This strategy makes the article more comprehensible and easy to follow. Moreover, readers find answer for any question pertaining to educational matters in the same article. Furthermore, Reeves uses another methodology i.

e. divisions and classifications, in order to make his article more organized.Reeves starts the article by providing some background information about education in the United States, and then he talks about seven different topics about the problems of people who are linked with learning and teaching. He mentions students, teachers, colleges, students’ families, and foreign students. Unlike other writers, he not only points out but also offers solutions for most of problems indicated in the article.

It is

relatively easy to talk about the faults and problems than to provide solutions for these faults and problems.For example Reeves points out a faults in the college admission policy. He further says that “the college has admission standards and that access does not guarantee graduation” (4). So he indicates the fault line that suggests a way toward its solution. After that he gives a solution to the parents about their children’s problem of not giving full concentration to their studies by saying; “a more-practical solution is for parents to find a cheap apartment some distance from the family home, deposit their son …… on it” (5).

So these solutions at the end of the article show his knowledge about what he described and illustrated earlier. Overall, Reeves did a great work by choosing the best method that has logical appeal. Most of his prepositions and claims in the article are supported by multi-layered evidences i. e.

from statistics, from other studies and secondary sources, and are completely relevant to the readers. Moreover, he organized the article in such a way that is easy to follow and understand.

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