Is Higher Education Worth The Price?

    When watching the documentary “Ivory Tower” and reading the passages that were provided, it really caused me to rethink the purpose of higher education. Hearing many points of views about higher education was needed because topics such as this one are usually avoided in college courses. They usually cause students to evaluate their education and can cause an uproar that most colleges try to avoid. Many colleges do not want us to know the truth and they paint a utopia that can be unrealistic. However, my favorite passage to read was David Foster Wallace Commencement speech which occurred in 2005. His point was to say that higher education is not just about learning new things but they are teaching us how to think. We are so used to seeing and experiencing things at surface level but being in school teaches us to think deeper and to think about different points of views. Thinking is an important part of life which also helps with how we carry ourselves and how we react to certain situations. 

“Are Colleges Worth Price Of Admission” By Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus made great points to help colleges improve themselves to be somewhat worth the expensive price. Presidents need to become more of public servants instead of just collecting checks and making decisions in an office. Presidents should be interactive with students and be a leader of the students and not just a person of a high position. We need better professors who are not just gonna give us a packet of work or just talk our ear off with a textbook full of information but we need professors who know the art of teaching and make the experience of a student interesting and engaging. With this pandemic it forced us to have techno-teaching which is doing everything via technology. It has been a hard start for a alot of us but we are slowly but surely getting used to it. I also agreed with the fact that donors should donate to colleges who really need it and not just colleges that already have the wealth but waste it on useless things. There is a list of colleges who need the money more than these prestigious schools and they should be able to have a piece of the pie as well. 

While watching the documentary “The Ivory Tower” it was very empowering to see how much parents care about the education of their children. It hit home when one parent was telling them to guarantee that their child was not going to come home after working hard for an extended amount of years and graduate without a job. We are afraid that colleges just see us as dollar signs instead of seeing the true potential that these students possess. It also seems that many people leave college with less than they came with and that should not be the case. We are claiming to be setting people up for their future but are leaving them with hundreds and thousands of dollars in debt.