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The Purpose Of A College Education

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""Nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life-save only this-that if you work hard and intelligently you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole, purpose of education." Americans tend to prefer a two-syllable synonym, bullshit, for the one-syllable Anglicism, rot-and so we might say that the most important thing one can acquire in college is a well functioning bullshit meter. It's a technology that will never become obsolete" (Delbanco 1). A college education years ago was a commodity whereas nowadays many people see it as a necessity. Although in reality there are many purposes for higher education such as …show more content…

People who have graduated college have a higher chance of getting hired than those who simply have a high school diploma. According to Andrew Delbanco, Professor of American Studies at Columbia University, "there is abundant evidence that people with a college degree earn more money over the course of their lives than people without one. One authority claims that those who hold a BA degree earn roughly 60 percent more, on average, over their lifetime than those who do not" (1). As you can see those with college educations make more, therefore they have the potential to inject more into the economy around them. Also stated in Delbanco's paper, "providing more people with a college education is good for the economic health of the nation; and, second, that going to college is good for the economic competitiveness of the individuals who constitute the nation" (1). Delbanco is extremely outspoken when it comes to this topic, but there are others who concur. An analytical company called Hart Research Associates conducted a survey with various employers and prompted them that if it were their own child or someone they knew personally, would a college education be recommended? According to their …show more content…

In the United States, legislature and issues are on the table every single day that involve ethics. Suppose there is a bill that will lower taxes for a county of people but would eradicate funding for the area's homeless shelter. These types of issues cannot be dealt with by robots in suits with no emotional capacity or else the latter will always lose. In an article published in The New York Times, human-rights journalist and political commentator Nicholas Kristof states, "To weigh these issues, regulators should be informed by first-rate science, but also by first-rate humanism" (1). Decisions cannot be solely based on fact and fiscal responsibility. The experts are in sympathy that there must be a humanitarian or humanistic aspect to these decision-making process and that they are not always related to governmental policy but our country's social scene. This excerpt can be found in the article Starving for Wisdom,

We need people conversant with the humanities to help reach wise public policy decisions, even about the sciences. Technology companies must constantly weigh ethical decisions: Where should Facebook set its privacy defaults, and should it tolerate glimpses of nudity? Should Twitter close accounts that seem sympathetic to terrorists? How should Google handle sex and violence, or defamatory

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