Justification For Higher Education

Chris Harrison

Writing 39B, Assignment 1

5 February 2003

Justification For Higher Education

After analyzing William A. Henry III s In Defense of Elitism and Caroline Bird s

College is a Waste of Time and Money , it is clear that Henry s argument concerning the

purpose of an education is more rational than Bird s due to the fact that Henry supports his claims

with credible statistics, logical insight, and uses current real world scenarios. Bird, on the

contrary, bases her argument solely on manipulated statistics, overly dramatic claims, and

ridiculously out-of-this-world scenarios.

While there are various viewpoints and perspectives on the subject of higher education,

Henry for one, has landed the conclusion that in America higher education for the masses has not

only been extremely costly economically, but it has also greatly lowered the educational standards

and therefore defeated the purpose of higher education itself.

Henry s primary grievance against higher education for the masses is that the influx of

mediocrities relentlessly lowers the general standards at colleges to levels the weak ones can

meet (335). Quite simply, higher education is by no means any higher if the standards keep

lowering just so some students can barely meet the minimum standards. For example, although I

am a full supporter of the bell curve in college, it is certain that this recent innovation has had its

share in lowering the university s educational standards. This practice of calculating the students

average score on an exam and then re-scaling grades to help those who didn t fare as well is a

clear example of bringing the standard of college down to everyone s level (336). I can certainly

attest to this claim because I was recently directly affected by the bell curve. In the first quarter of

my freshman year, I received a score of 44 out of a possible 100 points on my Physics 7A final

exam. According to the general 10% increment grading scale, this would mean that I earned an F

on the exam. However, thanks to the mediocrities earning even lower scores than myself and

the establishment of the bell curve, I fared quite nicely and escaped with a B- grade. Although this

is definitely good news for me, Henry s claim that the mediocrities tend to lower the educational

standard seems to prevail.

The influx of mediocrities flooding college campuses has also lowered the credibility and

status of a college degree. Henry acknowledges this and states that the trend in recent years has

been eliminating layers of middle management"much of it drawn from the ranks of those lured

to college a generation or two ago by the idea that a degree would transform them from the

mediocre to magisterial (334). Of course, this is no longer the case. Higher education does not

necessarily lead to higher income or status. For example, the median income for a stockbroker

who has a college degree is approximately $50,000 a year .A truck driver earns the same income

and potentially even more depending on the amount of hours he works, all without a college

degree . This is exactly why Henry is endorsing higher educational scarcity. A college degree

doesn t even guarantee a job or higher pay anymore due to the mediocrities making the institution

of college and a degree itself mediocre.

In addition to lowering college standards, higher education for the masses has also

imposed great economic costs on the American people while delivering dubious benefits.. (333).

While some may consider this to be an investment in human capital (333), Henry disagrees. He

supports his claim with a demanding statistic from the U.S. Labor Department s Bureau: 20% of

all college graduates toil in fields not requiring a college degree, and this total is projected to

exceed 30% by the year 2005"(333). So one must then ask the question why these students went

to college in the first place? This returns us to one of Henry s most important points: Mediocre

students have been flooding into colleges the past couple generations thinking a college degree

will transform them from the mediocre to magisterial (334), when in turn a college education is

only as good as the individual being educated.

As wasteful as it may seem, college graduates working in fields that don t even require a

degree is indeed a trend today. It reminds me of a close family friend of mine who graduated from

the University of California, Riverside in 2000 as a math major. Today he is working as a private

investigator for an insurance company. This job not only lacks the requirement of a four year

college degree, but can actually be obtained rather quickly by simply enrolling in a six-week

training program. It is certainly not fair to simply categorize my friend in Henry s group of

mediocrities just yet, but it is safe to say that he would have been better off not going to college in

the