Schlack's Article 'Not Going To College Is A Viable Option'

School Wide Writing Project Former superintendent, Lawrence B. Shlack argues in his article, Not Going to College is a Viable Option, that too many students believe that going to college is the only option after high school in order to be successful. The main purpose of this article is to convince students to be less narrow-minded on the topic of post-high school decisions and effectively provides the reasoning behind his logic and provides alternatives. As a retired superintendent, Schlack proves that he has sufficient credibility and knowledge of high school students and what most of them are thinking. The use of pathos and ethos combined with his credibility appeals to the readers strongly by making the article relatable for most high schoolers.

However, in the article, “Why College Isn’t for Everyone”, Matthews describes a diagram taken from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Based on the diagram, the lower quartile demonstrates that students with a four year degree seemingly do not make more money than a high school graduate. While this may sound as if people should not attend college, the root cause of this problem is that individuals are not putting enough thought into their future. In other words, individuals who do not have a future plan for their career or degree is negatively affecting society. They may be moving from one job to another and sacrificing a lower pay for a job, ultimately not knowing what they want to do with their earned degree.

Short-response prompt (15 points) In a speech to high school students, a business owner makes the following statement: "Nowadays a high school diploma alone will get you nowhere in life."   Write a short argument either for or against this statement. Be sure to include a clear claim and to provide and respond to at least one counterclaim. Use specific details from your own experiences and observations to develop your argument.

“On average, college graduates make significantly more money over their lifetime than those without a degree… What gets less attention is the fact that not all college degrees or college graduates are equal. ”(pg.208 para. 1) Stephanie Owen and Isabel Sawhill are senior researchers at Brookings’ Center on Children and Families, Sawhill is also a senior fellow in economics study at Brookings’. Owen and Sawhill authored the essay, “Should everyone go to College?” The authors use a wide variety of rhetorical devices in the essay, including ethos, pathos, and logos to persuade their audience to take another look at whether college is the right choice for them.

Is college worth the money? This has been a question asked by millions of high school seniors, current college students, graduates, and parents across the United States. Many argue that it opens more doors over those who chose not to attend while others argue that we send too many students all while increasing the national student loan debt. Author Marty Nemko argues in his article, “We Send too Many Students to College,” that too many students are pushed to go to college. Nemko assumes that those reading his article are parents questioning if college is the right decision for their child.

The authors’ emphasis on “on average” is very effective at showing how their point makes sense and why it should be taken into consideration. I found the way that the authors focused on the minority more than the majority was skillfully effective at showing how some career paths do not require a college education and that the return in investment would not be worth the cost. Throughout their argument I found the writers to mostly use Logos and Ethos in their writing. The Logos is evident by the way they use statistics and the Ethos by how they state telling someone the only way to be successful is to go to college is a disservice. This is effective at making the reader think about how this should affect the decision of going to college and whether they should push someone to go to

Lawrence B. Schlack author of ¨Not going to College is a Viable Option” article is persuasive for students entering college. Throughout the essay Mr. Schlack gives many examples to why it is very important for students to know what they want to do before making a lifelong choice. Doing this Lawrence B. Schlack uses ethos, pathos and logos to establish persuasion within the article. Overall the article, “Not Going to College is a Viable Option” is an article persuades readers to stop and think of the choices they’re going to make.

Throughout the essay, Charles Murray stresses the idea that college is the wonderland of finding oneself and to find the career that one would want to follow for the rest of their lives. “College is seen as the open sesame to a good job and a desirable way for adolescents to transition to adulthood. Neither reason is as persuasive as it first appears.” Murray, C (2008) Practically spoken, this is not normally the case. College is a fair amount of work, much more work than one would normally acquire through any course of a high school or secondary school setting.

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.

College Isn’t for Everyone "By telling all young people that they should go to college no matter what, we are actually doing some of them a disservice" (Owen). This quote from “Brookings Paper: Is College a Good Investment” goes into detail about how college isn’t for everyone. By educators, parents, and authority figures telling graduating high school seniors that college is necessary, they are limiting the potential of that student’s true skills. College isn’t right for everyone and not everyone wants to go to college.

“Is College the best option why or why not discusses the controversial issue of whether college is important or not. On one hand, while some argue that college is very important. Stephanie Owens and Isabel Sawhill writers of article “Should Everyone Go to College” asserts that we may be doing a disservice by telling all young people that college is the best option. Owens feels that college may be of service to some people, but not the best option for everyone.

If a person’s parent or guardian drilled the idea of college into your head, or if they told you ‘do what you want’ or ‘I don 't care’, or ‘You’re not going’. While college is great, there are other means of education. The value of college is a low because there are people who do not qualify for a college education, and also because there are other ways of post-secondary education other than college. College is not valuable because many people will not make it into a 2 or 4-year college, much less graduate from one. To support this, in the article Why College Isn 't For Everyone, it says, “As a general rule, I would use graduates in the top quarter of their class at a high-quality high school should go on to a four-year degree program, while those in the bottom quarter of their classes at a high school with a mediocre educational reputation should not.”

A rising issue in today’s society is deciding whether or not college is worth the cost. There is an extreme amount of pressure that is forced upon high school students by parents, teachers, and peers to further their education and attend college. However, there is research that challenges the thought that college is the best possible path for a person to take. College may be a great investment for some people, but it is not meant for everyone. This is supported by the arguments that colleges are expensive, jobs do not always require a college degree, and students are forced to choose a lifestyle before being exposed to the real world.

In all article, authors gave credible sources and they use logical statistic data to prove why everyone should invest in college. By all these authors show that students have to go through their hardest part of their life when they go to college. In the article author only focusing on what are the benefits of college

Recent studies on adults who didn’t attend college show that ”Two-thirds of those who do not end up enrolling college believed during high school that college was in their futures, but realities like the high price of college often impeded this goal”(Rebecca Klein). In other words tuition costs, low GPAs, and the fear of college being to difficult, petrifies high school seniors into not even applying for colleges. Therefore colleges would benefit those scared to apply by lowering tuition costs and/or lowering standards. Regardless of your excuses to not go to college, you should want to better yourself and in doing that find college alternatives. In order to have a higher paying job, have your dream career, and have more job opportunities ,you should attend a college that you would benefit from.