Option Three. Read Bryan Caplan’s “The World Might be Better Off Without College for Everyone” and write an essay that analyzes the validity of his claim. You should see this critical review in The Washington Post of Caplan’s ideas. You can also use The Ivory Tower documentary as one of your 5 sources.
Summary of Caplan's Essay
One. There is a disconnect between "college curricula and the job market." In other words, the subject matter is too often irrelevant to the labor market.
Two. Students don't retain knowledge.
Three. Students are "philistines," which means they are soulless materialists who care only about money and status.
Four. We have "credential inflation," which results in a lot of worthless credentials.
Five. The dogma that we must go to college makes us neglect vocational training.
Did Bryan Caplan disrespect young people or was his criticism more for college itself?
Sample Thesis #1:
If we take Caplan's college criticism seriously and combine it with the devastating cost of college and its lack of performance, we must conclude that college is too often failing students, killing their dreams, and siphoning young people's money to feed a greedy business empire.
The above conclusions can be found in the 2014 documentary Ivory Tower.
Sample Thesis #2:
Even if we accept Caplan's criticism that college is a scam, most of us will not benefit from dropping out of college and trying to hack our education through free internet coursework such as MOOC because credible research shows that if we can reign in our college debt, we can use a college degree to make significantly higher income over our lifetime.
Thesis #3
We must stop blaming colleges for our demise. The real fault lies within ourselves. We need to create a criteria of self-reliance and success to make ourselves responsible for our own career. College doesn't destroy us, college doesn't become a "beer and circus factory," and college doesn't kill our dreams unless we allow it to.
Developing PEEL Paragraphs (PEEL equals Point, Evidence, Explanation, and Links)
When writing a research paper, it’s very important in the evidence or example section to use a quote from the text.
Paragraph Example
The essay "Green Guilt" makes a powerful argument that we must accept the afflictions of guilt and sin, whether that guilt is caused by religious or secular forces, in order that we survive and thrive in a cooperative society. As we read in Asma’s essay, “All this internalized self-loathing is the cost we pay for being civilized. In a very well organized society that protects the interests of many, we have to refrain from our natural instincts.” Indeed, our natural instincts, if left unchecked, would create a barbaric world where no kind of viable or even pleasing society could flourish. The second curse of selfish desires unbridled by a sense of guilt and sin would be the moral dissolution that would ensue as hordes of people would become numb to pleasures resulting in frustration and increased violence. We see evidence of such mayhem and grand displays of nihilism in hedonistic societies right before they crumble such as the Fall of Rome. Finally, let us not neglect to point out that a sense of sin can prompt us to be more disciplined so that we maximize the success of our personal goals rather than squandering our life on the foolish errands prompted by our unharnessed desires. To conclude, Asma convincingly shows us that it is in our best interests to repress our base passions by swallowing the Sin Pill in order to fulfill our potential as individuals and as a society.
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