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College Is Not For Everyone

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College is not for Everyone Introduction It is a well known fact but there are many people including counselors, parents, teachers, and friends who resist saying it out loud for fear it will sound like discouragement and negativity: college is definitely not for everyone. The pressure on high schools students, especially those that excel, to attend a college or university is enormous. And in the case of a bright, industrious and motivated high school student, attending a college or university is an obvious career choice. For those students, it's only a matter of what university to attend, whether one's SAT score is high enough, and the availability of the money. Then there are the millions of high school students who are not really personally motivated but are being pressured by their counselors, teachers and parents should they attend college if they really don't care? This paper examines those issues. Thesis: When parents shove an unmotivated teenager into a community college just because it is socially prestigious to say one's children are "…going to college" those parents are doing a huge disservice to that person. It's akin to shoving a dog's mussel into a pan of water when he's not thirsty. The Literature Professor James E. Rosenbaum (with the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University) takes the position in his book that counselors are not doing the most professional thing when they urge poor-performing students to attend community colleges.

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