Rhetorical Analysis Of The World Might Be Better Off Without College For Education

In the article, The World Might be Better Off Without College for Education, written by Bryan Caplan, explains how people do not apply what they learned in college into their actual jobs. He mainly focuses his argument on people who are deciding if they want to go to college or not because he is expressing if going to college is actually worth the money being spent. Through the use of rhetorical strategies like testimony, statistics, exemplification, and authority they help the audience have a clearer understanding of his argument.
Throughout the article Caplan uses testimony to prove to high schoolers that a lot of people do not apply what they learn in college to their jobs. Caplan first uses testimony at the beginning of the article describing
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He states, “In 2003, the United States Department of Education gave about 18,000 Americans the National Assessment of Adult Literacy. The ignorance it revealed is mindnumbering. Fewer than a third of college graduates received a composite score of “proficient” -- and about a fifth were at the “basic” or “below basic” level.” To explain in further detail, Caplan is showing the audience that statistically not a lot of people even remember what they have learned in college. This shows that they were not using the information that they learned in college and applied back into their real jobs. There are many possible factors like not doing a job that is connected with your major or memory loss. This is because some people realize that what they decided to do in college will not actually make them enough money to financially stable and able to pay off their student loans. So many students then end up doing jobs that do not correspond to their major. This eventually leads to the conclusion that what they learned in college did not apply to what they do currently for their jobs. That is why Caplan argues his point with the use of about how a lot of people do not apply what they learned in college to their job because a lot of people do not repetitively use what they learned in college to their jobs. Overall, through the use of statistics it makes Caplan's argument more
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Right away at the beginning of the article he lists out his credentials and how long he has been in school for. He claims, “I have been in school for more than 40 years. First preschool, kindergarten, junior high, and high school. Then a bachelor’s degree at UC Berkeley, followed by a doctoral program at Princeton. The next step was what you could call my first ‘real’ job-- as an economics professor at George Mason University.” This is important that he shows authority to the audience because he is taken more seriously. It is important that Caplan has good credentials when writing about a topic about how students may want to reconsider college. Caplan may scare his audience because a lot of people do not want to waste money in college. That is why it is important that he lays down what he has accomplished because it will help the reader realize that they know what he is saying is credible and