Sociological Causes

Growing up, for most people, going to college is not an option- its an expectation. In our society, going to college has become a fundamental part of our education, becoming an adult, and for most people just simply part of our lives. However, as people grow up and experience reality, the realization hits that college may not be as simple as once thought. As much as attending college is expected from the majority of young people, dropping out of college is not. Even with the idealization of the college experience, some students are forced to cut their education short due to a plethora of issues.

In Charles Murray’s article, “Are Too Many People Going to College?”. he seeks to enlighten younger generations and administrators on a socially unacceptable future- not attending higher schooling after high school. He establishes insight through use of examples and statistics throughout his writing. However, he tends to repeatedly violates literary maxims that lead to his writing getting distracted from the main point or leading the reader to become confused by his use of terms. Through his many successes and obstacles, he still manages to create a new perspective on not going to college, making it just as wise of a decision as going to college depending on the career path and scholarly education a student accumulated in prior schooling.

Post-secondary education is imperative, considering the fact that those who obtain some form of higher education are less likely to be unemployed or live in poverty. The social issue that plagues my community most is the low enrollment of students at post-secondary institutions. Having a higher education is one of the key components of a healthy, stable, and successful life. Nonetheless, students shy away from a post-secondary education for several reasons, including tuition costs, lack of encouragement to attend a college/university, difficulty level, and the chance to earn more money without attending college. Because of society’s lenient standards, higher education is becoming progressively irrelevant to students.

They claim, “...students of color are showing that they feel disconnected from their respective schools, that implicit yet institutionalized racism creates emotional distance between them and their white peers and faculty. Being a black student on a predominantly white campus certainly, doesn’t guarantee that the student will develop mental-health issues. However, various studies suggest that perceived or actual discrimination can make it hard for students of color to engage with their campus in the way that their white peers do.” This explains how students sometimes feel like they don’t get enough support from their universities and this is dangerous because it can lead that student to drop out of school.

An anecdotal example is given of a student who admits that while she should have been paying attention to the lecture, she instead was anxiously watching the clock wondering if she would make to the local shelter in time. Sara Goldrick-Rab and Katherine M. Broton speculate that this could be one of the main reasons why students drop out of college. Even students who attend community colleges, which are supposed to be more affordable, struggle to support themselves while getting their education. Sometimes scholarships, while they still cut costs, are not always enough to help students through college. Since a higher education is becoming a necessity for getting a job, the solution to this food and shelter insecurity is to create private and government initiatives which will help support students with their basic needs throughout college.

Campus Racial Climate research focuses on how the racial environment of a university could foster positive academic outcomes and increased graduation rates for students of color (Solórzano, Villalpando, & Oseguera, 2005). For instance, Perrakis and Hagedorn (2010) contend that prejudice based on language, immigration status, culture and identity are ubiquitous in the American educational system. With regard to the experiences of Latina/o students, research indicates that when Latina/o students experience a high level of support and security while attending a university (a positive campus climate) this can improve their psychological well-being and academic achievement while in college (Gloria, Castellanos, & Orozco, 2005). Campus Racial Climate

“College is a Waste of Time and Money” is an essay written by Caroline Bird which expresses the view that college is not essential to adulthood, is a poor investment, and adults should not assert to young adults that going to college is the right thing to do. Bird gives an immensely strong argument that “It has become too expensive in money, time, and intellectual effort to serve as a holding pen for large numbers of our young” (Bird, 436). After reading the essay, it is evident that a great percentage of the students attending college do not actually want to be there and are attending due to the reiteration that college is a necessity. Thus, college is now a money-making industry and focuses on the social aspect of college rather than the

Schlack sums up the issue in three key words, “status, economics and competition”. By identifying these three factors, schack strengthens his appeal towards the reader by letting them know that he understands what is false about their ideas of going to college. Additionally, Schlack gives an example of a student who is brainwashed by parents and teachers who push them towards going to college. “ college is like your life. If you don 't go to college… you can 't live a successful life”.

The main expense students face when it comes to higher education is not only just tuition. In fact tuition only makes up a minor part of the heavy financial burden that college education brings; most of the costs that students and their families face are external costs, or non-tuition related expenses, such as textbook prices, dormitory fees, and cost of transportation. Even if their tuition loans are erased, most of them still face these external costs that are at the core of their financial burden. This leads to the main problem of high-college drop out rates; if the financial burdens of these families are not solved, students would often not be able to focus on their studies or wish to escape from their financial situation by dropping-out of college. With no job and no degree, the college drop-out students are far from the skilled and educated work force that is the end goal of our higher education system.

In the United States’ current political climate, “racism” is a term thrown around so often that it almost begins to lose its original definition. The same can be said when discussing and analyzing the success rate of minority students in higher education. People are inclined to jump to the conclusion that a faculty member or institution is inherently racist instead of looking at all of the factors involved in a student’s success. The three main factors that I will be covering over the course of this essay are school tuition rates, Affirmative Action policies, and how schools handle discipline. While there are cases of inarguable racism within higher education, an in-depth analysis of the factors stated above will prove that “racism” is not

So, various studies have shown that people of color are actually made to feel excluded, where their peers perform microaggressions among other thing, which causes people of color to have an overall negative perception of the university and its climate. Racial microaggressions exist in mainly three forms which are microassault, microinsult, and microinvalidation (Sue et. al., 2007), and studies were done to see if racial microaggressions have a negative impact on the climate of a college campus, and a negative impact on African-American students (Solorzano et. al., 2000).

The University of Louisiana at Monroe has a diverse group of students, all of which are divided into different sub-cultures. Graduates are a group of students many people might define as responsible, mature, and even dedicated. They are slightly older than your average undergraduate student, and as a graduate assistant, many can be found in a professor’s class or office doing research. There are several types of graduate students with different cultural backgrounds. Focusing on the differences or similarities of the cultural dynamics between two graduates and how their upbringing prompted their academic choices.

The reasoning of why I enrolled and the factors of how I got into college relate back to C. Wright Mills’s concept of sociological

Perspective is a chosen approach that can be used to study any subject in the field of sociology. These perspectives highlight the diverse methods an individual selects to analyze a theme and how they perceive the society in general. Three sociological perspectives include functionalist, conflict and interactionist perspectives (Thompson, Hickey, & Thompson, 2016, p. 2). Throughout this paper, I examine how we analyze the role of television from the functional, conflict, and interactionist approaches.

According to the dominant theory the affirmative action was firstly introduced to deal with two types of social disruption in the 1960s as campus protests and urban riots in the North. However, this article is based on different theory as dominant theory's empirical evidence is limited. It examines the initial reason for advent of race-conscious affirmative action in 17 undergraduate institutions in the United States. And according to the research this article concludes that there were two waves that contributed to affirmative action: 1) first wave in the early 1960s introduced by northern college administrators 2) second wave in the late 1960s introduced as a response to the protests of campus-based students. This article will help me to establish the main reasons for introduction of race-conscious affirmative action in undergraduate