College Cost and Student Value of Education Research
Due dates: Rough Draft – 09/26/16 Final Draft – 10/19/16
Length requirements: 5-7 pages (1500-2100 words approx.)
Paper requirements: Your essay must be typed, double-spaced, and have margins no wider than 1¼”. Use a 12-point font, preferably Times New Roman or something similar. Do not use Courier.
Assignment: Using at minimum of one article/essay from our class readings please use essay from" Island Bones by Joy Castro On Becoming Educated' plus two outside, credible sources of your choosing (this can be a newspaper or magazine article, a news report, etc.), argue a position based on one of the following statements:
Take a side, develop a strong thesis, and argue your case. Remember, your position does not have to agree with either of these statements. You can disagree, or you can find yourself somewhere in the middle. It’s OK to live in the gray area (in fact, that’s where most of us view the world).
Essay 1 will practice the following skills: integration of multiple texts with your ideas, summary, MLA documentation, organization, paragraph structure and support (“evidence”), development of a thesis, and critical/analytical thinking. Essay 1 is worth 25% of your final grade.
In your paper you must include quotes in support of your thesis statement, preferably integrated into your text. For each point you make in support of your thesis you will: define your point in a clear manner, provide a source to support your point, and discuss how the example relates to your point (via metacommentary and/or return sentences).
You must cite a minimum of four passages, in MLA format, to support your thesis.
While your personal experience can (and most likely will) come to bear on this essay, this is not meant to act as solely a reflective piece. Therefore, while you can use personal
pronouns (e.g., I, me, my) and personal statements (e.g., I think, I feel, I know), this essay should reach a universal audience.
Things to consider before writing: 1. Who is your intended audience? How can your writing reach these individuals to guarantee they’ll pay attention? 2. Though you are certainly entrenched in both topics, you probably aren’t an expert on either. As such, how will you establish credibility to your audience? 3. Likewise, what can you do to create an emotional connection with your reader? 4. What do you need to do in order to complete this assignment in an orderly fashion? How can you guarantee you will successfully enter class on 9/26 with a
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College Cost and Student Value of Education
“The cost of college outweighs its immediate value to students leaving them in debt and unable to jumpstart lifelong careers.†My point of view on this statement is that there are benefits that the college graduates receive despite having student’s loans to pay. I think that college education is a good investment and the debts can be paid with time. It may be difficult to deal with the student loan debts but the advantage of a college degree puts one at a much higher position of getting employment and advancing in their careers. However, there are situations that the cost of college would overwhelm the value of the student. This writing will keenly evaluate the details that agree and those that disagree with the cost of college outweighing the immediate value to students such that, they are not able to jumpstart their careers due to the student debts they have. The points expressed will be those that are for and those that are against the statement.
In this particular section, I will focus on the value of the students against the cost of college education. My argument will portray that the cost of college education does not overwhelm the value of the students. I will start by focusing on the benefits of the college education and pointing out that the cost of college actually enhances the student value. I concur with Deitz and Abel when they say that the trend of college education being a good investment deviates from the fact that students pay more to go to college but they receive less during their employment after graduation (1). The New York article on the Current Issues in Economic and Finance revealed that the benefits of the bachelor’s degree or an associate degree outweigh the cost of college (Deitz and Abel 1). The article`s authors supported this statement by saying that the returns will still be high in spite of the falling wages of the working population with and without degrees (2). Although, the authors insisted that having a college degree ranks a person higher in terms of wages as compared to a person with a high school diploma (3). The New York Federal Reserve study also argued with the fact that there are benefits of the college degrees even with the tough employment prospects despite the college tuition being high. The study also mentioned that the returns in college degrees have fluctuated over time, for about 15% in the past ten years because the wages for those with degrees has declined steadily hence boosting the college wage premium, but those who are less educated have their prospects degenerated (5). As Deitz and Abel allude, I believe that there are benefits in college education and through getting high wages one is able to pay back their student loans as they advance in their careers.
In this paragraph, I base my discussion on the time it takes one to pay their students loan. Education is costly everywhere and students take very high loans to study and it takes them up to when they are fifty years old to actually finish repaying their loans. From the essay - On Becoming Educated by Joy Castro, she mentioned that she still had a few more months to finish repaying her college loans even after her son just graduated from Oberlin College (99). This would show that it does take time to pay on the loans and in the meantime, a person focuses on their career and family. After graduating, one may also find a career that they like while still paying the student loan debts, just as Joy Castro did (Castro 97). This is also visible to majority of the people working in America that are paying college debts years after they graduated. I believe that the level of education will put graduates at the forefront of jumpstarting their career after graduation and in the process, these graduates are able to repay their student debts.
My focus on the next point, (disagrees with the statement that the cost of education overwhelms the student value) is on the level on education. This section will concentrate on what one can earn with a degree as compared to what one earns without. Considering the aptitudes that the people that go to college gain over those that do not go, qualifies the person with a college degree to benefit more economically. The expectation of the average wages for those with a college degree are higher than for those with a high school diploma (Deitz and Abel 3). The co-authors of the Federal Report, Jaison Abel and Richard Dietz, compared the benefits and the total cost of investing in a degree to determine a wage premium. The report showed that the annual average wages for people with a bachelor’s degree was 56% more than for those with a high school diploma. Those people with an associate degree would earn 25% more than those with a high school diploma (4). The data presented however fluctuates over time. It has been noticeable that the benefits of the college degree will improve the annual wages and it is also a lifetime earning opportunity (4). The postgraduate degrees were not included in this setting because people with this level of education earn more than those with a bachelor’s or associate degree. This clearly outlines the benefits of the level of education in relation to the wages received and even career advancement (Castro 97,101). With this kind of earning due to the level of education that one has achieved, student debts will be able to be paid and people would get the opportunity to advance in their careers.
My next point will centre on the opportunity costs and the student majors in colleges, in order to support the statement that the student value is not overwhelmed by the cost of college education. I will start by supporting Deits and Abel`s discussion on the fact that the price of studying has risen over the past decade and that the out of pocket sum that students pay is lesser than the “sticker†price sum that aid students obtain, and are not required to pay back, like grants and tax benefits as shown in the reports. This improves the student value since the student loans are now constricted. The opportunity cost are exempted by college graduates who enter the job market at a later year. These are the costs that would have been made for those years that the graduates were in school (Deitz and Abel 5). I think t...