Journal #1

Daniil Tatsenko

Professor Matyakubova

Eng 201-06

March 6th, 2020

                                                                Journal #1

College has become the goal of high schools across the country. The goal of high school is no longer to make you a knowledgeable individual, instead it is to prepare you for college. Once students get to college, their goals are only to graduate in 4 years with a bachelor’s degree. However that one-dimensional view of college, and inadvertently the adult life the students are slowly transitioning into is almost set up for hardships. Students should be aware of their goals, and should be aware of ways colleges can and cannot help them in their quests. 

College students are different than the students they were before. They are now adults, and their expectations and standards should be held high, the students should be learning independence. College students need to face the adversities head-on, with no free helping hands from their parents that they may have got when they were kids. According to Maureen Tillman “...many recent college graduates do not have resiliency skills ‘as a result of being bubble-wrapped in high school and college’ by parents who want to protect them.” This helicopter parenting hurts the young adults in the end. This overprotection will result in incompetent young adults in the job market once they graduate, who won’t be able to adapt quickly enought to the world around them. 

College students also do not take full advantage of their colleges, that they are paying for. With skyrocketing college tuition costs, students need to be aware of the services offered to them— they need to get the most bang for their buck. There is a general naivety among students, that think that the piece of paper, the degree, is all that matters. The students may go an entire four years, only acquiring knowledge but no practice in their field— and then expect to be handed a job based on their merits earned in the classroom for four years. According to Dr. Kefalas, there has been an increase in the amount of students who are having difficulties going from college life into the workforce— saying “many show up in the career office for the first time in their senior year.” Students are not setting themselves up for success, they are sabotaging themselves because of the lack of opportunity-seeking during college.

However, it is wise to thoroughly research the college in consideration before applying and taking courses. This is because college degrees hold different values depending on what college they originate from. This is well covered in the documentary College Inc., in which the documentary makes it a point that for-profit colleges’ degrees do not hold the same weight as a state school. The documentary presents 3 women that are struggling to find a job in nursing, because their degree, acquired from a for-profit, does not satisfy employers. Their degree lacks the training the women needed in order to be competitive in the field, rendering them incompetent along their peers who went to legitimate colleges.

The For-Profit model also follows a close model to other corporations in the country, that are all trying to make a profit. The for-profit colleges spend immense money on advertising, getting the word out about their service to as many people as possible. These for-profit colleges depend on the lowest-common-denominator types of students to take their bait, and enroll. The colleges need to make their money back from what they spent on advertising. To compensate for this budget, their tuition costs are high, and the service they provide is lackluster. In the documentary College Inc., the interviewer poses the right question, “When you are spending more on getting me to come to the school, than you are in the service you are providing once I’m there, is that right?” (18:30)  to which the ex-executive of a for-profit college weasels his way out of. The response was a rhetoric, arguing that the advertising is what sells and makes the product not the actual raw cost of the product/service provided. 

College students should be wary of the ways they may hinder their professional lives and careers. Whether it is through knowing how to take advantage of the resources they are provided, becoming independent, knowing whether a college’s degree is worth something in the industry, to discriminating a college that has your education prioritize from that has its investors prioritized. College students need to be conscious of  scam-colleges, and advancing their opportunities for their future professional lives.