Is Higher Education Worth the Price? Antonio Hallenbeck





 The question “Is Higher Education Worth the Price?” is a controversial one to most people, but what does it mean exactly? Well it’s pretty self explanatory, should we be paying thousands of dollars for the same education that is given at almost every school? Will paying all of this money help me find a high paying job after college anyway? All of these questions are on the minds of college students every single day, but in order to find out the answer and really understand why we pay thousands of dollars to go to certain schools I had to do some research with the articles I was provided. According to the article “Are Colleges Worth the Price of Admissions?” by Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus they state “They are staffed by casts of thousands and dedicated to everything esoteric research to vocational training and have lost track of their basic mission to challenge the minds of young people”, and this quote is describing how colleges have thousands of teachers but they have all failed to challenge the students minds. 

Many college classes follow the same rubric for every year and make the lessons and classes boring which lead to students not paying attention to the materials they are learning. Also in the article they describe some ways that can fix the college education system to keep students on track and invested in learning the new materials and a few of the options are “Engage all students” which means make it a hands on lesson or at least allow the class to give their input instead of having students sit silently all period. Another way is “Replace tenure with multi year contracts” which means to replace the older teachers with newer and more educated people which would help since they will most likely be closer to the age of the students which would help them connect more and make the classes more interesting and more engaging if they have a good student/ teacher relationship. With these changes being suggested to colleges this brings us back to our main question “Is Higher Education Worth the Price?”, and with how colleges are operating and educating students the answer to that question in my opinion would be no, it is not worth the price. College students graduate with six figures worth of debt and there is no guarantee that if you graduate from a high education college that you’ll find a high paying job for yourself. 

Students are paying thousands of dollars for an education that most won’t find any interest in since most classes are just lectures instead of hands on learning and most others will just cheat their way through college since all they have is lecture classes. Higher education would be worth the price if you got what you’re paying for, which is hands on learning and the ability to include yourself into many fun projects based on your major. If we made some changes to the college education systems then it will be worth the thousands of dollars you pay to go to college. 

Comments

  1. prof.KDecember 12, 2022 at 6:56 AM

    Antonio,
    A strong and persuasive point of view. It's interesting to see your preference for experiential, hands-on learning vs. more traditional academic curriculae. If the whole point of higher education is mostly to get a higher paying job/career, it's difficult to defend the absolute benefit of a college education. The relationship between and availability of the faculty to the students is also a factor, as you point out.
    Thoughtful and persuasive, thank you.
    Professor Knauer

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