Summary Of Why Colleges Shower Their Students With A's By Brent Staples

In his article “Why Do You Think They’re Called For-Profit Colleges?” Kevin Carey offers harsh criticisms of for-profit colleges by claiming that they are directly to blame for the disproportionately high quantity of debt that their postgraduate students acquire. His primary reasoning for such is that for-profit colleges are charging more for their degrees than they are actually worth. He himself writes, “for-profits charge much more than public colleges and universities. Many of their students come from moderate- and low-income backgrounds…

Through Carey’s tactical use of organization and word choice, he is able to suggest his ideas to the audience without directly telling them. Carey’s audience is highly educated and he writes in such a way as to make them feel like they came to their own conclusion that is in congruence with his. Additionally, towards the end of his article Carey mentions some important ideas about accreditation and college legitimacy. After he transitions from discussing for-profit colleges, he writes that “traditional institutions have long resisted subjecting themselves to any objective measures of academic quality” (Carey). Again, Carey mentions this important claim at the end of a paragraph.

Brent Staple’s essay "Why Colleges Shower Their Students with A's" had various elements that helped provided evidence and persuade the readers. The first thing I noticed when reading this essay was the comparison between the marketplace and college. This comparison helps to develop Staple’s argument because it explains something that is unfamiliar by comparing it to something that is more familiar. I can assume that the target readers were business men and women. Since I am unfamiliar with some business terms, I found that this essay explained something that was unfamiliar with something else that was unfamiliar.

Would you be happy if you had received an A in your class? Do you feel that you truly learned enough to deserve that perfect A? Students who are in either high school or college are forgetting the true meaning of having knowledge and being able to learn. People think that how well they perform in the classroom will justify how well the teacher teaches their students but necessary that might not always be that way. In Brent Staples piece, “Why Colleges Shower their Students with A’s”, he argues that there must be an end to the grade Inflation and continues by examining for a possible solution by using language techniques to emphasize the main point.

“On the Uses of Liberal Education” written by Mark Edmundson offers this notion that the college network is becoming something more of a pay-n-go than an institute of higher education, students are more disconsolate and looking towards the professors for entertainment. It is becoming less about the education and more about filling seats and acquiring money. Parents could be partially blamed for their children who grow to be too scared to stand up or be criticized, they would rather stay quiet and let the professors be their entertainment. “I want some of them to say that they’ve been changed by the course”, this made me realize that this doesn’t happen enough and I agree with Edmundson that it’s somewhat due to imperturbable students since

Professors try to justify the sudden rise in grades but their explanations hardly convinces anyone. Mark Edmundson a professor at University of Virginia, writes about this in his essay, On the Uses of a Liberal Education,. He states, "a professor at Stanford [University] recently explained grade inflation in the humanities by observing that the undergraduates were getting smarter every year; the higher grades simply recorded how much better they were than their predecessors. Sure" (Edmundson 396). Edmundson 's sarcastic tone in his writing shows that he does not believe the Stanford professor 's explanation for grade averages going up.

Imagine blowing up a balloon, with every exhale of breath the balloon gets bigger. Similar to a balloon, with every year that passes grades inflate. In “Grade Inflation Gone Wild” by Stuart Rojstaczer, he discusses how the grading system has changed over the years. Rojstaczer’s overall purpose is to increase awareness of grade inflation and persuade his audience to take action. He argues that “changes in grading have had a profound influence on college life and learning” (2).

Gary Gutting and Mark Edmundson the authors of the essays “What is College For?” and “On the Uses of a Liberal Education” respectively expressed their opinions on how college isn’t what it used to be. Gutting said some universities don’t teach what they are supposed to; they make some classes compulsory so students end up taking classes that are unnecessary. In result when students are given these particular courses as they become disinterested and aim for average instead of learning the material. Gutting also points out lack of academic engagement is why people misinterpret the existence of the college.

Recently, many have begun to attack and degrade higher education in the United States. In the book How College Works, authors Daniel Chambliss and Christopher Takacs claim, “As state support has eroded, and as more students attend college in an increasingly desperate attempt to find viable jobs, the price to students of attending an institution of higher education has gone up, especially at more selective institutions” (172). So is college even worth it? Caroline Bird’s excerpt from her book Case Against College “Where College Fails Us” is an adequately written article that agrees with those who question whether college is a good investment. Bird argues that although some students would benefit from college and succeed, many fall short, wasting

Brent Staples wrote a beautiful, yet unconvincing article about colleges giving away “free” A’s to students. The article, “Why Colleges Shower Their Students with A’s,” appeared in 1988 in the New York Times paper (Staples 935). Staples himself has earned a PhD in psychology and is a member of the New York Times editorial board (935). The general purpose of this article was to inform the audience that over the past couple of years, university grading policies have become extremely lenient (935). The audience is a very limited to educational administrations and alumni of major universities.

In “Are Too Many People Going to College?”, Charles Murray writes, “Today, if you do not get a B.A., many people assume it is because you are too dumb or too lazy” (253). Basically, Murray is chastising the social norm for a young adult to get a college degree. Though I concede that expectations to go to college put on by counselors, parents, and the media are way too much, I still insist that everyone should be able to go to college regardless as it is financially beneficial and provides a unique perspective of the world. Although Murray puts up a good defense of how America infatuation with a college degree can lead to a class disparity, the author lacks the practicality of Core Knowledge, consideration of how a college education has its intrinsic and monetary merits that students can get by completing a degree, and an opposing view that a college degree does not necessarily lessen the

In “From Degrading to De-Grading,” Alfie Kohn criticizes current grading systems and their alleged harm to students. Kohn first lists three main problems with grading and then adds seven more. In summary, grading results in students showing little interest in learning, students choosing easier assignments, and less creative students (p. 254-255). The next seven points expose grading as unreliable, distracting, and tedious. Grading also incites cheating and ruins relationships between students and teachers (p. 255-257).

In “College Pressures” by William Zinsser, leader of one of the residential colleges at Yale University, the author describes the different amount of pressures that students struggle with in college. Because of his position at the university, he constantly noticed the students around him and the anxiety that was radiating off them. He believes that economic pressures cause students to feel anxious about paying back student loans after college. However, parental pressure leads students to make decisions that their parents would be happy with because of the feeling of guilt and wanting to please them.

However, the privilege of obtaining an education is becoming increasingly difficult to finance which ironically leaves some college students with the decision to choose between pursuing their dreams or having a meal on a consistent basis. The general perception of students who attend college is that since they are able to afford to further their education, they are inherently privileged and inevitably categorized as part of the affluent demographic within our nation. In contrast, Frank Eltman of the Huffington Post expressed that the majority of students enrolled in a university are ineligible for food stamps despite suffering from food insecurity. Eltman also capitalizes on the statistic that the tuition for public universities has increased an inordinate amount of twenty seven percent in the last five years. However, tuition is not the only expense that students are expected to finance.

Students not being used to freedom, for example, causes them to not be prepared for the over amount of freedom given during college. This leads kids to put off homework, not go to class, and other bad habits because they are not used to managing their time. These habits can lead to an unsuccessful college carrer, eventually leading to dropping out. A second example at the meso level is students getting caught up in partying on the weekends or even during the week. For a lot of students, being away from their parents means absolute freedom to do whatever they want, allowing a lot of young adults to “go crazy” in the partying scene.