elite college debate

After reading through all the articles that either said going to elite college or univercity is what you should aim for or it is a waste of time, I had a bit of a difficulty of judging which one was the best. Perhaps this is because my bull shit detector was a bit too sensitive, beeping nonstop in my mind. Since I had such a difficulty, I decided to write about the one which I found the least persuasive; Skip the Admission’s game by Kevin Carey

There are several reasons for my lack of support for the article. One reason (if not the main reason) is that it had a poor style and voice. When I read it, to me it sound as if a 4^th grader from elementary school wrote this. This is not what I expected to get out of reading this since the true author, Kevin Carey, had a college degree. If he was to participate in Ms. Valdez’s class, he would have a long way until he stops receiving Ds and Fs. His title does not sound relevant to what he has to say. “skip the admission” sounds as if he is trying to persuade students to avoid working like crazy to get enrolled into elite colleges.

There were several parts in the article where he focused on assumptions. An example is   “They're nice places to hang out for four years and you'll probably learn a few things”. This is no nessasarly true in all elite colleges. Some strongly limit socializing like military colleges. Here he is describing colleges as a day care since he mentioned “probably a few things”. In college, you are training yourself to master in a field, not to just learn a little and socialize. However, this article did have a few parts that my B.S. detector did not go off beeping like crazy. There were parts some reliable facts where use to support his point and cited his sources, though it would take a while for someone to find the parts he took since his source was continuous. An example where this progress was shown was where he stated some data from Community College Survey of Student Engagement.